Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
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Saki (H.H. Munro) >> Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
That evening, at the crowded corner by the Cafe de la Paix, I caught
a fleeting glimpse of Laploshka. He smiled, slightly raised his
hat, and vanished. I never saw him again. After all, the money had
been GIVEN to the deserving rich, and the soul of Laploshka was at
peace.
THE BAG
"The Major is coming in to tea," said Mrs. Hoopington to her niece.
"He's just gone round to the stables with his horse. Be as bright
and lively as you can; the poor man's got a fit of the glooms."
Major Pallaby was a victim of circumstances, over which he had no
control, and of his temper, over which he had very little. He had
taken on the Mastership of the Pexdale Hounds in succession to a
highly popular man who had fallen foul of his committee, and the
Major found himself confronted with the overt hostility of at least
half the hunt, while his lack of tact and amiability had done much
to alienate the remainder. Hence subscriptions were beginning to
fall off, foxes grew provokingly scarcer, and wire obtruded itself
with increasing frequency. The Major could plead reasonable excuse
for his fit of the glooms.
In ranging herself as a partisan on the side of Major Pallaby Mrs.
Hoopington had been largely influenced by the fact that she had made
up her mind to marry him at an early date. Against his notorious
bad temper she set his three thousand a year, and his prospective
succession to a baronetcy gave a casting vote in his favour. The
Major's plans on the subject of matrimony were not at present in
such an advanced stage as Mrs. Hoopington's, but he was beginning to
find his way over to Hoopington Hall with a frequency that was
already being commented on.
"He had a wretchedly thin field out again yesterday," said Mrs.
Hoopington. "Why you didn't bring one or two hunting men down with
you, instead of that stupid Russian boy, I can't think."
"Vladimir isn't stupid," protested her niece; "he's one of the most
amusing boys I ever met. Just compare him for a moment with some of
your heavy hunting men--"
"Anyhow, my dear Norah, he can't ride."
"Russians never can; but he shoots."
"Yes; and what does he shoot? Yesterday he brought home a
woodpecker in his game-bag."
"But he'd shot three pheasants and some rabbits as well."
"That's no excuse for including a woodpecker in his game-bag."
"Foreigners go in for mixed bags more than we do. A Grand Duke pots
a vulture just as seriously as we should stalk a bustard. Anyhow,
I've explained to Vladimir that certain birds are beneath his
dignity as a sportsman. And as he's only nineteen, of course, his
dignity is a sure thing to appeal to."
Mrs. Hoopington sniffed. Most people with whom Vladimir came in
contact found his high spirits infectious, but his present hostess
was guaranteed immune against infection of that sort.
"I hear him coming in now," she observed. "I shall go and get ready
for tea. We're going to have it here in the hall. Entertain the
Major if he comes in before I'm down, and, above all, be bright."
Norah was dependent on her aunt's good graces for many little things
that made life worth living, and she was conscious of a feeling of
discomfiture because the Russian youth whom she had brought down as
a welcome element of change in the country-house routine was not
making a good impression. That young gentleman, however, was
supremely unconscious of any shortcomings, and burst into the hall,
tired, and less sprucely groomed than usual, but distinctly radiant.
His game-bag looked comfortably full.
"Guess what I have shot," he demanded.
"Pheasants, woodpigeons, rabbits," hazarded Norah.
"No; a large beast; I don't know what you call it in English.
Brown, with a darkish tail." Norah changed colour.
"Does it live in a tree and eat nuts?" she asked, hoping that the
use of the adjective "large" might be an exaggeration.
Vladimir laughed.
"Oh no; not a biyelka."
"Does it swim and eat fish?" asked Norah, with a fervent prayer in
her heart that it might turn out to be an otter.
"No," said Vladimir, busy with the straps of his game-bag; "it lives
in the woods, and eats rabbits and chickens."
Norah sat down suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.
"Merciful Heaven!" she wailed; "he's shot a fox!"
Vladimir looked up at her in consternation. In a torrent of
agitated words she tried to explain the horror of the situation.
The boy understood nothing, but was thoroughly alarmed.
"Hide it, hide it!" said Norah frantically, pointing to the still
unopened bag. "My aunt and the Major will be here in a moment.
Throw it on the top of that chest; they won't see it there."
Vladimir swung the bag with fair aim; but the strap caught in its
flight on the outstanding point of an antler fixed in the wall, and
the bag, with its terrible burden, remained suspended just above the
alcove where tea would presently be laid. At that moment Mrs.
Hoopington and the Major entered the hall.
"The Major is going to draw our covers to-morrow," announced the
lady, with a certain heavy satisfaction. "Smithers is confident
that we'll be able to show him some sport; he swears he's seen a fox
in the nut copse three times this week."
"I'm sure I hope so; I hope so," said the Major moodily. "I must
break this sequence of blank days. One hears so often that a fox
has settled down as a tenant for life in certain covers, and then
when you go to turn him out there isn't a trace of him. I'm certain
a fox was shot or trapped in Lady Widden's woods the very day before
we drew them."
"Major, if any one tried that game on in my woods they'd get short
shrift," said Mrs. Hoopington.
Norah found her way mechanically to the tea-table and made her
fingers frantically busy in rearranging the parsley round the
sandwich dish. On one side of her loomed the morose countenance of
the Major, on the other she was conscious of the scared, miserable
eyes of Vladimir. And above it all hung THAT. She dared not raise
her eyes above the level of the tea-table, and she almost expected
to see a spot of accusing vulpine blood drip down and stain the
whiteness of the cloth. Her aunt's manner signalled to her the
repeated message to "be bright"; for the present she was fully
occupied in keeping her teeth from chattering.
"What did you shoot to-day?" asked Mrs. Hoopington suddenly of the
unusually silent Vladimir.
"Nothing--nothing worth speaking of," said the boy.
Norah's heart, which had stood still for a space, made up for lost
time with a most disturbing bound.
"I wish you'd find something that was worth speaking about," said
the hostess; "every one seems to have lost their tongues."
"When did Smithers last see that fox?" said the Major.
"Yesterday morning; a fine dog-fox, with a dark brush," confided
Mrs. Hoopington.
"Aha, we'll have a good gallop after that brush to-morrow," said the
Major, with a transient gleam of good humour. And then gloomy
silence settled again round the teatable, a silence broken only by
despondent munchings and the occasional feverish rattle of a
teaspoon in its saucer. A diversion was at last afforded by Mrs.
Hoopington's fox-terrier, which had jumped on to a vacant chair, the
better to survey the delicacies of the table, and was now sniffing
in an upward direction at something apparently more interesting than
cold tea-cake.
"What is exciting him?" asked his mistress, as the dog suddenly
broke into short angry barks, with a running accompaniment of
tremulous whines.
"Why," she continued, "it's your gamebag, Vladimir! What HAVE you
got in it?"
"By Gad," said the Major, who was now standing up; "there's a pretty
warm scent!"
And then a simultaneous idea flashed on himself and Mrs. Hoopington.
Their faces flushed to distinct but harmonious tones of purple, and
with one accusing voice they screamed, "You've shot the fox!"
Norah tried hastily to palliate Vladimir's misdeed in their eyes,
but it is doubtful whether they heard her. The Major's fury clothed
and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town
for one day's shopping tries on a succession of garments. He
reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he
pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignent for tears, he
condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless
and abnormal punishments. In fact, he conveyed the impression that
if a destroying angel had been lent to him for a week it would have
had very little time for private study. In the lulls of his outcry
could be heard the querulous monotone of Mrs. Hoopington and the
sharp staccato barking of the fox-terrier. Vladimir, who did not
understand a tithe of what was being said, sat fondling a cigarette
and repeating under his breath from time to time a vigorous English
adjective which he had long ago taken affectionately into his
vocabulary. His mind strayed back to the youth in the old Russian
folk-tale who shot an enchanted bird with dramatic results.
Meanwhile, the Major, roaming round the hall like an imprisoned
cyclone, had caught sight of and joyfully pounced on the telephone
apparatus, and lost no time in ringing up the hunt secretary and
announcing his resignation of the Mastership. A servant had by this
time brought his horse round to the door, and in a few seconds Mrs.
Hoopington's shrill monotone had the field to itself. But after the
Major's display her best efforts at vocal violence missed their full
effect; it was as though one had come straight out from a Wagner
opera into a rather tame thunderstorm. Realising, perhaps, that her
tirades were something of an anticlimax, Mrs. Hoopington broke
suddenly into some rather necessary tears and marched out of the
room, leaving behind her a silence almost as terrible as the turmoil
which had preceded it.
"What shall I do with--THAT?" asked Vladimir at last.
"Bury it," said Norah.
"Just plain burial?" said Vladimir, rather relieved. He had almost
expected that some of the local clergy would have insisted on being
present, or that a salute might have to be fired over the grave.
And thus it came to pass that in the dusk of a November evening the
Russian boy, murmuring a few of the prayers of his Church for luck,
gave hasty but decent burial to a large polecat under the lilac
trees at Hoopington.
THE STRATEGIST
Mrs. Jallatt's young people's parties were severely exclusive; it
came cheaper that way, because you could ask fewer to them. Mrs.
Jallatt didn't study cheapness, but somehow she generally attained
it.
"There'll be about ten girls," speculated Rollo, as he drove to the
function, "and I suppose four fellows, unless the Wrotsleys bring
their cousin, which Heaven forbid. That would mean Jack and me
against three of them."
Rollo and the Wrotsley brethren had maintained an undying feud
almost from nursery days. They only met now and then in the
holidays, and the meeting was usually tragic for whichever happened
to have the fewest backers on hand. Rollo was counting to-night on
the presence of a devoted and muscular partisan to hold an even
balance. As he arrived he heard his prospective champion's sister
apologising to the hostess for the unavoidable absence of her
brother; a moment later he noted that the Wrotsleys HAD brought
their cousin.
Two against three would have been exciting and possibly unpleasant;
one against three promised to be about as amusing as a visit to the
dentist. Rollo ordered his carriage for as early as was decently
possible, and faced the company with a smile that he imagined the
better sort of aristocrat would have worn when mounting to the
guillotine.
"So glad you were able to come," said the elder Wrotsley heartily.
"Now, you children will like to play games, I suppose," said Mrs.
Jallatt, by way of giving things a start, and as they were too well-
bred to contradict her there only remained the question of what they
were to play at.
"I know of a good game," said the elder Wrotsley innocently. "The
fellows leave the room and think of a word; then they come back
again, and the girls have to find out what the word is."
Rollo knew the game. He would have suggested it himself if his
faction had been in the majority.
"It doesn't promise to be very exciting," sniffed the superior
Dolores Sneep as the boys filed out of the room. Rollo thought
differently. He trusted to Providence that Wrotsley had nothing
worse than knotted handkerchiefs at his disposal.
The word-choosers locked themselves in the library to ensure that
their deliberations should not be interrupted. Providence turned
out to be not even decently neutral; on a rack on the library wall
were a dog-whip and a whalebone riding-switch. Rollo thought it
criminal negligence to leave such weapons of precision lying about.
He was given a choice of evils, and chose the dog-whip; the next
minute or so he spent in wondering how he could have made such a
stupid selection. Then they went back to the languidly expectant
females.
"The word's 'camel,'" announced the Wrotsley cousin blunderingly.
"You stupid!" screamed the girls, "we've got to GUESS the word. Now
you'll have to go back and think of another."
"Not for worlds," said Rollo; "I mean, the word isn't really camel;
we were rotting. Pretend it's dromedary!" he whispered to the
others.
"I heard them say 'dromedary'! I heard them. I don't care what you
say; I heard them," squealed the odious Dolores. "With ears as long
as hers one would hear anything," thought Rollo savagely.
"We shall have to go back, I suppose," said the elder Wrotsley
resignedly.
The conclave locked itself once more into the library. "Look here,
I'm not going through that dog-whip business again," protested
Rollo.
"Certainly not, dear," said the elder Wrotsley; "we'll try the
whalebone switch this time, and you'll know which hurts most. It's
only by personal experience that one finds out these things."
It was swiftly borne in upon Rollo that his earlier selection of the
dog-whip had been a really sound one. The conclave gave his under-
lip time to steady itself while it debated the choice of the
necessary word. "Mustang" was no good, as half the girls wouldn't
know what it meant; finally "quagga" was pitched on.
"You must come and sit down over here," chorused the investigating
committee on their return; but Rollo was obdurate in insisting that
the questioned person always stood up. On the whole, it was a
relief when the game was ended and supper was announced.
Mrs. Jallatt did not stint her young guests, but the more expensive
delicacies of her supper-table were never unnecessarily duplicated,
and it was usually good policy to take what you wanted while it was
still there. On this occasion she had provided sixteen peaches to
"go round" among fourteen children; it was really not her fault that
the two Wrotsleys and their cousin, foreseeing the long foodless
drive home, had each quietly pocketed an extra peach, but it was
distinctly trying for Dolores and the fat and good-natured Agnes
Blaik to be left with one peach between them.
"I suppose we had better halve it," said Dolores sourly.
But Agnes was fat first and good-natured afterwards; those were her
guiding principles in life. She was profuse in her sympathy for
Dolores, but she hastily devoured the peach, explaining that it
would spoil it to divide it; the juice ran out so.
"Now what would you all like to do?" demanded Mrs. Jallatt by way of
diversion. "The professional conjurer whom I had engaged has failed
me at the last moment. Can any of you recite?"
There were symptoms of a general panic. Dolores was known to recite
"Locksley Hall" on the least provocation. There had been occasions
when her opening line, "Comrades, leave me here a little," had been
taken as a literal injunction by a large section of her hearers.
There was a murmur of relief when Rollo hastily declared that he
could do a few conjuring tricks. He had never done one in his life,
but those two visits to the library had goaded him to unusual
recklessness.
"You've seen conjuring chaps take coins and cards out of people," he
announced; "well, I'm going to take more interesting things out of
some of you. Mice, for instance."
"Not mice!"
A shrill protest rose, as he had foreseen, from the majority of his
audience.
"Well, fruit, them."
The amended proposal was received with approval. Agnes positively
beamed.
Without more ado Rollo made straight for his trio of enemies,
plunged his hand successively into their breast-pockets, and
produced three peaches. There was no applause, but no amount of
hand-clapping would have given the performer as much pleasure as the
silence which greeted his coup.
"Of course, we were in the know," said the Wrotsley cousin lamely.
"That's done it," chuckled Rollo to himself.
"If they HAD been confederates they would have sworn they knew
nothing about it," said Dolores, with piercing conviction.
"Do you know any more tricks?" asked Mrs. Jallatt hurriedly.
Rollo did not. He hinted that he might have changed the three
peaches into something else, but Agnes had already converted one
into girl-food, so nothing more could be done in that direction.
"I know a game," said the elder Wrotsley heavily, "where the fellows
go out of the room, and think of some character in history; then
they come back and act him, and the girls have to guess who it's
meant for."
"I'm afraid I must be going," said Rollo to his hostess.
"Your carriage won't be here for another twenty minutes," said Mrs.
Jallatt.
"It's such a fine evening I think I'll walk and meet it."
"It's raining rather steadily at present. You've just time to play
that historical game."
"We haven't heard Dolores recite," said Rollo desperately; as soon
as he had said it he realised his mistake. Confronted with the
alternative of "Locksley Hall," public opinion declared unanimously
for the history game.
Rollo played his last card. In an undertone meant apparently for
the Wrotsley boy, but carefully pitched to reach Agnes, he observed
-
"All right, old man; we'll go and finish those chocolates we left in
the library."
"I think it's only fair that the girls should take their turn in
going out," exclaimed Agnes briskly. She was great on fairness.
"Nonsense," said the others; "there are too many of us."
"Well, four of us can go. I'll be one of them."
And Agnes darted off towards the library, followed by three less
eager damsels.
Rollo sank into a chair and smiled ever so faintly at the Wrotsleys,
just a momentary baring of the teeth; an otter, escaping from the
fangs of the hounds into the safety of a deep pool, might have given
a similar demonstration of feelings.
From the library came the sound of moving furniture. Agnes was
leaving nothing unturned in her quest for the mythical chocolates.
And then came a more blessed sound, wheels crunching wet gravel.
"It has been a most enjoyable evening," said Rollo to his hostess.
CROSS CURRENTS
Vanessa Pennington had a husband who was poor, with few extenuating
circumstances, and an admirer who, though comfortably rich, was
cumbered with a sense of honour. His wealth made him welcome in
Vanessa's eyes, but his code of what was right impelled him to go
away and forget her, or at the most to think of her in the intervals
of doing a great many other things. And although Alaric Clyde loved
Vanessa, and thought he should always go on loving her, he gradually
and unconsciously allowed himself to be wooed and won by a more
alluring mistress; he fancied that his continued shunning of the
haunts of men was a self-imposed exile, but his heart was caught in
the spell of the Wilderness, and the Wilderness was kind and
beautiful to him. When one is young and strong and unfettered the
wild earth can be very kind and very beautiful. Witness the legion
of men who were once young and unfettered and now eat out their
souls in dustbins, because, having erstwhile known and loved the
Wilderness, they broke from her thrall and turned aside into beaten
paths.
In the high waste places of the world Clyde roamed and hunted and
dreamed, death-dealing and gracious as some god of Hellas, moving
with his horses and servants and four-footed camp followers from one
dwelling ground to another, a welcome guest among wild primitive
village folk and nomads, a friend and slayer of the fleet, shy
beasts around him. By the shores of misty upland lakes he shot the
wild fowl that had winged their way to him across half the old
world; beyond Bokhara he watched the wild Aryan horsemen at their
gambols; watched, too, in some dim-lit tea-house one of those
beautiful uncouth dances that one can never wholly forget; or,
making a wide cast down to the valley of the Tigris, swam and rolled
in its snow-cooled racing waters. Vanessa, meanwhile, in a
Bayswater back street, was making out the weekly laundry list,
attending bargain sales, and, in her more adventurous moments,
trying new ways of cooking whiting. Occasionally she went to bridge
parties, where, if the play was not illuminating, at least one
learned a great deal about the private life of some of the Royal and
Imperial Houses. Vanessa, in a way, was glad that Clyde had done
the proper thing. She had a strong natural bias towards
respectability, though she would have preferred to have been
respectable in smarter surroundings, where her example would have
done more good. To be beyond reproach was one thing, but it would
have been nicer to have been nearer to the Park.
And then of a sudden her regard for respectability and Clyde's sense
of what was right were thrown on the scrap-heap of unnecessary
things. They had been useful and highly important in their time,
but the death of Vanessa's husband made them of no immediate moment.
The news of the altered condition of things followed Clyde with
leisurely persistence from one place of call to another, and at last
ran him to a standstill somewhere in the Orenburg Steppe. He would
have found it exceedingly difficult to analyse his feelings on
receipt of the tidings. The Fates had unexpectedly (and perhaps
just a little officiously) removed an obstacle from his path. He
supposed he was overjoyed, but he missed the feeling of elation
which he had experienced some four months ago when he had bagged a
snow-leopard with a lucky shot after a day's fruitless stalking. Of
course he would go back and ask Vanessa to marry him, but he was
determined on enforcing a condition; on no account would he desert
his newer love. Vanessa would have to agree to come out into the
Wilderness with him.
The lady hailed the return of her lover with even more relief than
had been occasioned by his departure. The death of John Pennington
had left his widow in circumstances which were more straitened than
ever, and the Park had receded even from her notepaper, where it had
long been retained as a courtesy title on the principle that
addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts. Certainly she
was more independent now than heretofore, but independence, which
means so much to many women, was of little account to Vanessa, who
came under the heading of the mere female. She made little ado
about accepting Clyde's condition, and announced herself ready to
follow him to the end of the world; as the world was round she
nourished a complacent idea that in the ordinary course of things
one would find oneself in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner
sooner or later no matter how far afield one wandered.
East of Budapest her complacency began to filter away, and when she
saw her husband treating the Black Sea with a familiarity which she
had never been able to assume towards the English Channel,
misgivings began to crowd in upon her. Adventures which would have
presented an amusing and enticing aspect to a better-bred woman
aroused in Vanessa only the twin sensations of fright and
discomfort. Flies bit her, and she was persuaded that it was only
sheer boredom that prevented camels from doing the same. Clyde did
his best, and a very good best it was, to infuse something of the
banquet into their prolonged desert picnics, but even snow-cooled
Heidsieck lost its flavour when you were convinced that the dusky
cupbearer who served it with such reverent elegance was only waiting
a convenient opportunity to cut your throat. It was useless for
Clyde to give Yussuf a character for devotion such as is rarely
found in any Western servant. Vanessa was well enough educated to
know that all dusky-skinned people take human life as unconcernedly
as Bayswater folk take singing lessons.
And with a growing irritation and querulousness on her part came a
further disenchantment, born of the inability of husband and wife to
find a common ground of interest. The habits and migrations of the
sand grouse, the folklore and customs of Tartars and Turkomans, the
points of a Cossack pony--these were matter which evoked only a
bored indifference in Vanessa. On the other hand, Clyde was not
thrilled on being informed that the Queen of Spain detested mauve,
or that a certain Royal duchess, for whose tastes he was never
likely to be called on to cater, nursed a violent but perfectly
respectable passion for beef olives.