Improper Stories

ISBN:9781907970009

Improper Stories

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

Category:Short Stories, Humorous Fiction
Date Read:2 February 2025
Year Published:2010
Pages:130

Improper Stories is a collection of short stories by Saki, published in 2010 by Daunt Books. The collection is drawn from The Chronicles of Clovis (1911), Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914) and Toys of Peace, published posthumously in 1919. Saki is the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, born in British India in 1870. He volunteered to fight in World War I, despite being past the recruitment age, and was killed in France by a sniper’s bullet in 1916. His father was an inspector general for the Indian Imperial Police. But if we’re doing biography right now, a more interesting fact about him is that his pregnant mother was charged by a cow when he was only two. She miscarried and died soon after. It’s one of those tantalising details one finds in the lives of authors sometimes. In this case, I was reminded of the rhinoceros that charges and kills the parents of James Henry Trotter in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. James is very young when this happens, forcing him to live with his mean aunts Spiker and Sponge. In Munro’s case, his father sent him and his siblings to be raised by their grandmother and aunts, Charlotte and Augusta. It was a strict household, and the experience is credited with influencing Saki’s fiction.

Two of the three collections from which Improper Stories is comprised were published in the first decade of the twentieth century, known as the Edwardian period after England’s monarch, Edward VII, who succeeded his mother, Queen Victoria, in 1901 after her death. Edward reigned until his death in 1910. He was the last English monarch whose name is used to define a historical period. We understand there is always a stark disconnect between the characterisation of a period and its day-to-day realities, especially in the everyday lives of ordinary people. It is often the manners and customs of ‘society’, the richer classes, who define the fashion, the character and sensibility of a period. During the Edwardian years, Empire was still a thing and that mattered. Men like Munro’s father served the empire, and the wealthy elites of Britain still thought in colonial terms. Britain was still considered by the British to be a model of civilisation: society was formal, mannered, and characterised by strict moral codes around romance and even the raising of children. If you were rich enough you probably had domestic servants and nannies. Those familiar with Downton Abbey, particularly the earlier seasons before inter-class romances and the war begin to chip away at the rigid class structure of this world, have an insight into the ideals of the Edwardian era writ large. People were well dressed and children were well behaved. This was a mannered and cultured period, where etiquette counted for something and there were strict understandings about the formal procedures of society. People knew their place and how to behave.

Conn and Hal Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys, published 2007, to my mind, is a parody of the kind of book children might have received during this period. It’s full of activities to do, but it also contains knowledge on topics which has a distinctly British bent. You might even decide to interpret it, if you had a mind to, as a parody of books like The Boy's Own Annual (1879), The American Boy's Handy Book (1890) and the Children’s Encyclopædia (1909), which helped promote Britain’s imperialist position to a younger generation. Even my Australian Edition of Igguldens’ Dangerous Book for Boys includes histories of the British monarchy, British imperial wars, information about the British Commonwealth, and a whole chapter on the British Empire, dating it as late as 1997 when the British handed back Hong Kong, although by the 1956 Suez Crisis, the game was really already up.

Munro’s stories are a deliciously wicked satire on the mores and practices of this period in British history. Remember, this is a new century in which the Axis powers are flexing their muscle and the conditions which would precipitate the Great War, in which Munro, himself, died fighting, are escalating. But the Edwardian period, coming just before the war, is stereotyped as an era of leisure for the social elites, and in such an era, manners and custom are the weapons of conservative social power.

I think it’s worth keeping these impressions of the era in mind when reading Saki. If you remember the joy you felt when first reading Roald Dahl you will probably understand the delight that Saki offers; its subversiveness. Think how often children undermine the machinations of evil adults in Dahl’s works and you’ll understand. If Lemony Snicket is more your thing, think about his foil, the Happy Elf, who represents an unrealistic representation of children’s interests in ‘goodness’ and a belief that the world is a fair and happy place, and you’re about there as well.

What follows is a summary of the first story in this collection, ‘The Story Teller’, followed by my comments on how it represents Saki’s themes. (If you would rather read this story in its entirety, Saki is now copyright free, so you can read it by clicking here):

Three children travel on a train with their aunt. The children are bored. The aunt tries unsuccessfully to distract the children with sights outside the train, and then by attempting to tell them a moral story about a girl who is good and is saved from a bull by rescuers who admire her moral character. The children naturally bombard her with question about whether the girl would have been rescued even if she wasn’t good. The aunt has failed. A man travelling in the train compartment with them criticises the aunt and says it is not hard to tell a good story. He demonstrates by telling the children a tale about a girl called Bertha who is incredibly good. She has been awarded medals for her good behaviour which she always wears about her neck. She is so good that she has been invited to enjoy a Prince’s exclusive park. As he tells this story the man deftly answers questions it to the children’s satisfaction. He then continues with a dark turn. A wolf enters Prince’s garden. Bertha hides. But the medals Bertha is wearing, awarded for her goodness, clink, revealing her hiding place to the wolf, which finds her and eats her. The aunt tells the traveller that his was “a most improper story to tell young children”. The traveller, as he prepares to alight, replies “I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.”

The story is filled with details that seem to emerge tantalisingly from Saki’s own life, if we care about that sort of thing. Having been raised by aunts, his stories are filled with aunts or similar figures, often moralising and meanspirited. ‘The Story-Teller’, placed at the beginning of this collection, helps set the tone for what is to follow. We are alert to the accusation – an ‘improper story’ – which lends its name to this book. We are also learning what is expected in this society: that children remain quiet and ‘good’. Pressed with the need to keep the children entertained, the aunt cannot invent anything other than a moralistic homily about the benefits of doing as one is told. The man’s story, however, illustrates the point that the children have already implicitly gleaned: morality will not necessarily save you from the world. So, what is revealed in the aunt’s homily is a strategy of control. It’s a nice piece of satire that plays to the wider issue of English values and society, at that time.

Saki’s stories have certain elements which we find repeated, over and over. There are the aunt-like authority figures, of course. In ‘The Lumber Room’ Nicholas is excluded from a trip to the beach by his cousins’ aunt. The trip is devised for no other reason than to exclude Nicholas as a punishment, but we anticipate the outing will not go well for the cousins, and things will go equally badly for the aunt who remains to punish Nicholas. This story, like ‘The Story-Teller’ and others in the collection, is predicated on challenging the belief that unquestioning obedience and a lack of imagination are the preferable traits of young children. There is also a strain of implied or real violence in the stories. In ‘The Penance’ Octavian Ruttle kills a cat based on the mistaken belief it has been killing chickens. Three children who owned the cat cunningly separate Octavian from his daughter and keep her captive on the roof of a pigsty. They threaten to kill her as recompense for the death of their pet. Pigs and pigsties feature in a few of these stories. In ‘Hyacinth’, Hyacinth traps the three children of Colonial Secretary Jutterly in a pigsty with some young piglets, while the incensed sow is locked outside in the yard, determined to push her way in and kill the children as soon as Hyacinth opens the lock. Hyacinth threatens he will do so unless Jutterly loses the election to his own father, which is being held that night.

Animals appear in just about every one of these stories in one form or another. It’s not surprising since half the stories in this collection are taken from Beasts and Super-Beasts. Often, the real beasts are the villains of the story, like Octavian Ruttle who kills the cat (‘The Penance’ was published posthumously in 1919 in Toys of Peace). The children may threaten his daughter, but they call him a ‘beast’. When he serves his penance, he is released from his ignominy by a written message declaring him ‘Un-Beast’.

Again, think Downton Abbey and how appropriate a pig or cow, a hyena or a wolf would be outside the context of a farm or hunting. These are the kind of animals appearing shoulder-to-shoulder with more domesticated creatures like cats in the polite English world of Saki’s fiction. In ‘The Boar-Pig’ Matilda Cuvering uses the presence of an old pig to frighten uninvited guests away from her mother’s garden party. In ‘The Lull’ Vera introduces a pig and a gamecock into the room of Latimer Springfield on the pretext that a local reservoir has burst and the region is flooded, merely to prove to herself against her mother’s assertion that there was nothing that could be done to stop Springfield remaining awake all night worrying about the finishing touches to a speech he needs for a local election the following day. The irony is palpable. Some stories take a darker turn. When the Mombey’s child goes missing in ‘The Quest’, Clovis, Saki’s recurring character full of wit, cynicism and contempt for the upper class, suggests that the child may have been eaten by a hyena. The fact that the parents cannot even recognise their own child may be also saying something about parenting in the upper classes, too. In ‘Esmé’ a hyena escapes Lord Pabham’s personal zoo and actually eats a child. But the child is a gypsy and it is decided that it is best to say nothing about this incident, since Lord Pabham wouldn’t want the trouble of it and it is supposed that in the large gypsy encampments they never “really know to a child or two how many they’ve got.” Again, the idea of human ‘beasts’ is suggested in this assessment of the gypsies, but it is a prejudice that redounds against the privileged in this story. More light-hearted is the story ‘Mrs Packletide’s Tiger’. Mrs Packletide wishes to shoot a tiger before leaving India, believing it will bring her credit and eclipse the story of Loona Bimberton’s flight in an aeroplane (remember, this is in the early days of flight). It’s a story of mishap which undermines the pretence of colonialism and British power, when Mrs Packletide accidentally shoots the goat that is tied in place as a lure, instead, and the tiger, old and decrepit, collapses with a heart attack, frightened by the report of the rifle.

The atmosphere of Saki is formal but bizarre. An ailing child, Conradin, turns a stuffed polecat-ferret into his personal god in ‘Sredni Vashtar’, and his prayers for retribution against Mrs De Ropp, his guardian, seem to bear fruit. In ‘Tobermory’ Saki even delves into what we might call science fiction. After long years of experimenting, Cornelius Appin manages to make Lady Blemley’s cat capable of speech, which does not bode well for the cat. The cat has witnessed all manner of behaviours and heard all manner of embarrassing remarks from the family and its upper-class guests over time, none of which anyone in polite society wishes to have repeated. The cat seems to have had a similar status as the servant class in British society at this time, whose presence is largely ignored, but who see and hear so much.

We are aware of circumstances and motifs echoed from one story to another, slightly changed, giving a slightly different feel or outcome, throughout this collection, like the pig and pigsty, or the stories satirising British elections, or dark tales of fate met in the woods, like ‘The Hounds of Fate’ and ‘The Music on the Hill’. Clovis’ presence throughout much of the second part of this collection gives some coherence to the collection as well, since most of the latter half of the book is drawn from The Chronicles of Clovis, which becomes increasingly darker, compared to the first half of the book, in which the potential of extreme actions are usually averted. Read as a whole, what seems to characterise these stories is violent episodes, bizarre circumstances, obtuse logic and a penchant for the extreme, which mark Saki’s satirical dig at the pretensions of the upper class in the Edwardian period. Adjectives like ‘wicked’, ‘subversive’, ‘playful’, ‘evil’ and ‘charming’ all feel like fitting epithets for these stories. They are all a quick read and highly recommended.

Hector Hugh Munro 1870 - 1916

Saki is considered one of the best short story writers of his period and is often compared to Oscar Wilde for his wit and humour. Like Wilde, Saki is presumed to have been gay, but if he was, he was not open about it like Wilde. He formed no adult relationship publicly during his life. He was raised by aunts after his mother’s death, but he travelled with his father and siblings throughout Europe after his father’s retirement in 1887. Saki published a history of the rise of Russia in 1900, and he published When William Came in 1913, a novel about a future war in which England is defeated by Germany. The novel advocated compulsory military service. Saki, himself, volunteered for the Great War in 1914 even though he was beyond recruitment age.

Most of Saki’s writing was in the form of short stories. He published his short stories in newspapers like The Westminster Gazette, The Morning Post and the Bystander. Later, his stories would be published as books throughout the decade, beginning with Reginald (1904). Other collected works published in his lifetime include Reginal in Russia and Other Sketches (1910), The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) and Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914). The Toys of Peace (1919) and The Square Egg and Other Sketches (1924) were published posthumously.

Downton Abbey

The historical television drama, Downton Abbey is set during the Edwardian period leading up to the First World War and beyond. As the show begins it represents the very pinnacle of the Edwardian upper-class. It is the story of the fictional Crawley family, headed by the hereditary Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley, set in an era of style, wealth and privilege. However, the overarching story of Downton Abbey is one in which traditional status and privilege are being eroded by the pressures of money and the changes brought about by history and new attitudes to class.

In this dinner scene the opulence of the Crawley lifestyle is on full display. It also represents the class divisions in the household, with the domestic staff standing behind the seated family, waiting to attend their every need. This is a world of etiquette, style and strict social conventions.

A Children's Party

While this children’s party, held sometime in the Edwardian years, does not represent the very elite of Edwardian society, we can glean some attitudes about the raising of children from it. Saki’s stories show us that children were expected to be polite, deferential, and under controlled. All the children in this photograph wear hats and are seated at the party table. One boy in the foreground waves a British flag. Adults – mostly women – stand behind the children, somewhat like the servants in the Downton Abbey photograph, except here we understand the children are watched and their behaviour is being monitored. Unlike a modern party, in which we might expect children to be a little more chaotic, this party seems as much about socialisation as celebration. Children in Saki’s stories are not so well controlled, deferential or even respectful.

Edwardian Working Class

The Edwardian era is a period associated with leisure, wealth and rigidly defined class structures. While the upper class of this period is remembered for its fashion and lifestyle, life for working class England could be much more difficult. While this was the era in which female suffrage was called for (Saki opposed it) and attitudes to the needs of workers were more enlightened than in the past, factory workers were still subject to difficult lives in which basic needs like food were difficult to meet.

Improper Stories

Improper Stories is a modern collection of Saki’s work, drawn from two books published during Hector Hugh Munro’s life, and one published posthumously. This collection draw from The Chronicles of Clovis (1911 - CC), Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914 - BSB) and The Toys of Peace (1919 - TP). Below is the list of all the stories in the collection in order, with the designated collection in which each story was originally published marked by initials in square brackets.

The Story-Teller [BSB]
The Open Window [BSB]
Sredni Vashtar [CC]
The Penance [TP]
The Lumber Room [BSB]
Hyacinth [TP]
The Boar-Pig [BSB]
The Lull [BSB]
The Schartz-Metterklume Method [BSB]
The Quest [CC]
Clovis on Parental Responsibilities [BSB]
Mrs Packletide’s Tiger [CC]
The Hounds of Fate [CC]
The Music on the Hill [CC]
Esmé [CC]
The She-Wolf [BSB]
Laura [CC]
Tobomory

The Story-Teller

It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly that refuses to be discouraged. Most of the aunt’s remarks seemed to begin with “Don’t,” and nearly all of the children’s remarks began with “Why?” The bachelor said nothing out loud. “Don’t, Cyril, don’t,” exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.

“Come and look out of the window,” she added.

The child moved reluctantly to the window. “Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?” he asked.

“I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass,” said the aunt weakly.

“But there is lots of grass in that field,” protested the boy; “there’s nothing else but grass there. Aunt, there’s lots of grass in that field.”

“Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,” suggested the aunt fatuously.

“Why is it better?” came the swift, inevitable question.

“Oh, look at those cows!” exclaimed the aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.

“Why is the grass in the other field better?” persisted Cyril.

The frown on the bachelor’s face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.

The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite “On the Road to Mandalay.” She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.

“Come over here and listen to a story,” said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.

The children moved listlessly towards the aunt’s end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller did not rank high in their estimation.

In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questionings from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.

“Wouldn’t they have saved her if she hadn’t been good?” demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.

“Well, yes,” admitted the aunt lamely, “but I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.”

“It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.

“I didn’t listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,” said Cyril.

The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.

“You don’t seem to be a success as a story-teller,” said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.

The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.

“It’s a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate,” she said stiffly.

“I don’t agree with you,” said the bachelor.

“Perhaps you would like to tell them a story,” was the aunt’s retort.

“Tell us a story,” demanded the bigger of the small girls.

“Once upon a time,” began the bachelor, “there was a little girl called Bertha, who was extraordinarily good.”

The children’s momentarily-aroused interest began at once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter who told them.

“She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.”

“Was she pretty?” asked the bigger of the small girls.

“Not as pretty as any of you,” said the bachelor, “but she was horribly good.”

There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life.

“She was so good,” continued the bachelor, “that she won several medals for goodness, which she always wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clicked against one another as she walked. No other child in the town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody knew that she must be an extra good child.”

“Horribly good,” quoted Cyril.

“Everybody talked about her goodness, and the Prince of the country got to hear about it, and he said that as she was so very good she might be allowed once a week to walk in his park, which was just outside the town. It was a beautiful park, and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a great honour for Bertha to be allowed to go there.”

“Were there any sheep in the park?” demanded Cyril.

“No;” said the bachelor, “there were no sheep.”

“Why weren’t there any sheep?” came the inevitable question arising out of that answer.

The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might almost have been described as a grin.

“There were no sheep in the park,” said the bachelor, “because the Prince’s mother had once had a dream that her son would either be killed by a sheep or else by a clock falling on him. For that reason the Prince never kept a sheep in his park or a clock in his palace.”

The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.

“Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?” asked Cyril.

“He is still alive, so we can’t tell whether the dream will come true,” said the bachelor unconcernedly; “anyway, there were no sheep in the park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the place.”

“What colour were they?”

“Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all over.”

The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the park’s treasures sink into the children’s imaginations; then he resumed:

“Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind Prince’s flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no flowers to pick.”

“Why weren’t there any flowers?”

“Because the pigs had eaten them all,” said the bachelor promptly. “The gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn’t have pigs and flowers, so he decided to have pigs and no flowers.”

There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince’s decision; so many people would have decided the other way.

“There were lots of other delightful things in the park. There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment’s notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down and enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: ‘If I were not so extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed to come into this beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to be seen in it,’ and her three medals clinked against one another as she walked and helped to remind her how very good she really was. Just then an enormous wolf came prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its supper.”

“What colour was it?” asked the children, amid an immediate quickening of interest.

“Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she could, and the wolf came after her with huge leaps and bounds. She managed to reach a shrubbery of myrtle bushes and she hid herself in one of the thickest of the bushes. The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with rage. Bertha was terribly frightened, and thought to herself: ‘If I had not been so extraordinarily good I should have been safe in the town at this moment.’ However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf could not sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were so thick that he might have hunted about in them for a long time without catching sight of her, so he thought he might as well go off and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming with ferocity and triumph, and dragged Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness.”

“Were any of the little pigs killed?”

“No, they all escaped.”

“The story began badly,” said the smaller of the small girls, “but it had a beautiful ending.”

“It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard,” said the bigger of the small girls, with immense decision.

“It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,” said Cyril.

A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.

“A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching.”

“At any rate,” said the bachelor, collecting his belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, “I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.”

“Unhappy woman!” he observed to himself as he walked down the platform of Templecombe station; “for the next six months or so those children will assail her in public with demands for an improper story!”

The Penance

Octavian Ruttle was one of those lively cheerful individuals on whom amiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and, like most of his kind, his soul’s peace depended in large measure on the unstinted approval of his fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat he had done a thing of which he scarcely approved himself, and he was glad when the gardener had hidden the body in its hastily dug grave under a lone oak-tree in the meadow, the same tree that the hunted quarry had climbed as a last effort towards safety. It had been a distasteful and seemingly ruthless deed, but circumstances had demanded the doing of it. Octavian kept chickens; at least he kept some of them; others vanished from his keeping, leaving only a few bloodstained feathers to mark the manner of their going. The tabby cat from the large grey house that stood with its back to the meadow had been detected in many furtive visits to the hen-coups, and after due negotiation with those in authority at the grey house a sentence of death had been agreed on. “The children will mind, but they need not know,” had been the last word on the matter.

The children in question were a standing puzzle to Octavian; in the course of a few months he considered that he should have known their names, ages, the dates of their birthdays, and have been introduced to their favourite toys. They remained however, as non-committal as the long blank wall that shut them off from the meadow, a wall over which their three heads sometimes appeared at odd moments. They had parents in India—that much Octavian had learned in the neighbourhood; the children, beyond grouping themselves garment-wise into sexes, a girl and two boys, carried their life-story no further on his behoof. And now it seemed he was engaged in something which touched them closely, but must be hidden from their knowledge.

The poor helpless chickens had gone one by one to their doom, so it was meet that their destroyer should come to a violent end; yet Octavian felt some qualms when his share of the violence was ended. The little cat, headed off from its wonted tracks of safety, had raced unfriended from shelter to shelter, and its end had been rather piteous. Octavian walked through the long grass of the meadow with a step less jaunty than usual. And as he passed beneath the shadow of the high blank wall he glanced up and became aware that his hunting had had undesired witnesses. Three white set faces were looking down at him, and if ever an artist wanted a threefold study of cold human hate, impotent yet unyielding, raging yet masked in stillness, he would have found it in the triple gaze that met Octavian’s eye.

“I’m sorry, but it had to be done,” said Octavian, with genuine apology in his voice.

“Beast!”

The answer came from three throats with startling intensity.

Octavian felt that the blank wall would not be more impervious to his explanations than the bunch of human hostility that peered over its coping; he wisely decided to withhold his peace overtures till a more hopeful occasion.

Two days later he ransacked the best sweet shop in the neighbouring market town for a box of chocolates that by its size and contents should fitly atone for the dismal deed done under the oak tree in the meadow. The two first specimens that were shown him he hastily rejected; one had a group of chickens pictured on its lid, the other bore the portrait of a tabby kitten. A third sample was more simply bedecked with a spray of painted poppies, and Octavian hailed the flowers of forgetfulness as a happy omen. He felt distinctly more at ease with his surroundings when the imposing package had been sent across to the grey house, and a message returned to say that it had been duly given to the children. The next morning he sauntered with purposeful steps past the long blank wall on his way to the chicken-run and piggery that stood at the bottom of the meadow. The three children were perched at their accustomed look-out, and their range of sight did not seem to concern itself with Octavian’s presence. As he became depressingly aware of the aloofness of their gaze he also noted a strange variegation in the herbage at his feet; the greensward for a considerable space around was strewn and speckled with a chocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there with gay tinsel-like wrappings or the glistening mauve of crystallised violets. It was as though the fairy paradise of a greedyminded child had taken shape and substance in the vegetation of the meadow. Octavian’s bloodmoney had been flung back at him in scorn.

To increase his discomfiture the march of events tended to shift the blame of ravaged chicken-coops from the supposed culprit who had already paid full forfeit; the young chicks were still carried off, and it seemed highly probable that the cat had only haunted the chicken-run to prey on the rats which harboured there. Through the flowing channels of servant talk the children learned of this belated revision of verdict, and Octavian one day picked up a sheet of copy-book paper on which was painstakingly written: “Beast. Rats eated your chickens.” More ardently than ever did he wish for an opportunity for sloughing off the disgrace that enwrapped him, and earning some happier nickname from his three unsparing judges.

And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-old daughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till one o’clock with her father while the nursemaid gobbled and digested her dinner and novelette. About the same time the blank wall was usually enlivened by the presence of its three small wardens. Octavian, with seeming carelessness of purpose, brought Olivia well within hail of the watchers and noted with hidden delight the growing interest that dawned in that hitherto sternly hostile quarter. His little Olivia, with her sleepy placid ways, was going to succeed where he, with his anxious well-meant overtures, had so signally failed. He brought her a large yellow dahlia, which she grasped tightly in one hand and regarded with a stare of benevolent boredom, such as one might bestow on amateur classical dancing performed in aid of a deserving charity. Then he turned shyly to the group perched on the wall and asked with affected carelessness, “Do you like flowers?” Three solemn nods rewarded his venture.

“Which sorts do you like best?” he asked, this time with a distinct betrayal of eagerness in his voice.

“Those with all the colours, over there.” Three chubby arms pointed to a distant tangle of sweet-pea. Child-like, they had asked for what lay farthest from hand, but Octavian trotted off gleefully to obey their welcome behest. He pulled and plucked with unsparing hand, and brought every variety of tint that he could see into his bunch that was rapidly becoming a bundle. Then he turned to retrace his steps, and found the blank wall blanker and more deserted than ever, while the foreground was void of all trace of Olivia. Far down the meadow three children were pushing a go-cart at the utmost speed they could muster in the direction of the piggeries; it was Olivia’s go-cart and Olivia sat in it, somewhat bumped and shaken by the pace at which she was being driven, but apparently retaining her wonted composure of mind. Octavian stared for a moment at the rapidly moving group, and then started in hot pursuit, shedding as he ran sprays of blossom from the mass of sweet-pea that he still clutched in his hands. Fast as he ran the children had reached the piggery before he could overtake them, and he arrived just in time to see Olivia, wondering but unprotesting, hauled and pushed up to the roof of the nearest sty. They were old buildings in some need of repair, and the rickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian’s weight if he had attempted to follow his daughter and her captors on their new vantage ground.

“What are you going to do with her?” he panted. There was no mistaking the grim trend of mischief in those flushed by sternly composed young faces.

“Hang her in chains over a slow fire,” said one of the boys. Evidently they had been reading English history.

“Frow her down the pigs will d’vour her, every bit ’cept the palms of her hands,” said the other boy. It was also evident that they had studied Biblical history.

The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it might be carried into effect at a moment’s notice; there had been cases, he remembered, of pigs eating babies.

“You surely wouldn’t treat my poor little Olivia in that way?” he pleaded.

“You killed our little cat,” came in stern reminder from three throats.

“I’m sorry I did,” said Octavian, and if there is a standard measurement in truths Octavian’s statement was assuredly a large nine.

“We shall be very sorry when we’ve killed Olivia,” said the girl, “but we can’t be sorry till we’ve done it.”

The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart before Octavian’s scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close and unstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her, but as she began to sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on her that she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in the tentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling with the quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way at all points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearing in the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with the contortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigsty roof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment of the Parcæ Sisters.

“I can’t reach her in time,” gasped Octavian, “she’ll be choked in the muck. Won’t you help her?”

“No one helped our cat,” came the inevitable reminder.

“I’ll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that,” cried Octavian, with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inches forward.

“Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?”

“Yes,” screamed Octavian.

“Holding a candle?”

“An’ saying ‘I’m a miserable Beast’?”

Octavian agreed to both suggestions.

“For a long, long time?”

“For half an hour,” said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in his voice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a German king who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas-time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear to have read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly in their eyes.

“All right,” came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a moment later a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, who lost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scrambling gingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass that separated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her like an unwilling cork from it’s slushy embrace. A few minutes later he was listening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that her previous experience of filthy spectacles had been on a notably smaller scale.

That same evening when twilight was deepening into darkness Octavian took up his position as penitent under the lone oak-tree, having first carefully undressed the part. Clad in a zephyr shirt, which on this occasion thoroughly merited its name, he held in one hand a lighted candle and in the other a watch, into which the soul of a dead plumber seemed to have passed. A box of matches lay at his feet and was resorted to on the fairly frequent occasions when the candle succumbed to the night breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, but as Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance he felt certain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-shared vigil.

And the next morning his eyes were gladdened by a sheet of copy-book paper lying beside the blank wall, on which was written the message “Un-Beast.”

Esmé

“All hunting stories are the same,” said Clovis; “just as all Turf stories are the same, and all—”

“My hunting story isn’t a bit like any you’ve ever heard," said the Baroness. “It happened quite a while ago, when I was about twenty-three. I wasn’t living apart from my husband then; you see, neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. In spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more homes than it breaks up. But we always hunted with different packs. All this has nothing to do with the story.”

“We haven't arrived at the meet yet. I suppose there was a meet,” said Clovis.

“Of course there was a meet,” said the Baroness; all the usual crowd were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church. ‘I feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,’ she said to me; ‘am I looking pale?’

‘She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard bad news.

“‘You're looking nicer than usual,’ I said, ‘but that’s so easy for you.’ Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some gorse-bushes.”

“I knew it,” said Clovis, “in every fox-hunting story that I’ve ever heard there’s been a fox and some gorse-bushes.”

“Constance and I were well mounted,” continued the Baroness serenely, “and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight, though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however, we must have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just beneath us.

“‘There they go,’ cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, ‘In Heaven's name, what are they hunting?’

“It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.

“‘It's a hyaena,’ I cried; ‘it must have escaped from Lord Pabham’s Park.’

“At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.

“The hyaena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyaena were left alone in the gathering twilight.

“‘What are we to do?’ asked Constance.

“‘What a person you are for questions, I said.

“‘Well, we can't stay here all night with a hyaena,’ she retorted.

“‘I don't know what your ideas of comfort are,’ I said; ‘but I shouldn’t think of staying here all night even without a hyaena. My home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn’t find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.’

“We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the beast following cheerfully at our heels.

“‘What on earth are we to do with the hyaena?’ came the inevitable question.

“‘What does one generally do with hyaenas?’ I asked crossly.

“‘I’ve never had anything to do with one before,’ said Constance.

“‘Well, neither have I. If we even knew its sex we might give it a name. Perhaps we might call it Esmé. That would do in either case.’

“There was still sufficient daylight for us to distinguish wayside objects, and our listless spirits gave an upward perk as we came upon a small half-naked gipsy brat picking blackberries from a low-growing bush. The sudden apparition of two horsewomen and a hyaena set it off crying, and in any case we should scarcely have gleaned any useful geographical information from that source; but there was a probability that we might strike a gipsy encampment somewhere along our route. We rode on hopefully but uneventfully for another mile or so.

“‘I wonder what that child was doing there,’ said Constance presently.

“‘Picking blackberries. Obviously.’

“‘I don't like the way it cried,’ pursued Constance; ‘somehow its wail keeps ringing in my ears.’

“I did not chide Constance for her morbid fancies; as a matter of fact the same sensation, of being pursued by a persistent fretful wail, had been forcing itself on my rather over-tired nerves. For company's sake I hulloed to Esmé, who had lagged somewhat behind. With a few springy bounds he drew up level, and then shot past us.

“The wailing accompaniment was explained. The gipsy child was firmly, and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.

“‘Merciful Heaven!’ screamed Constance, ‘what on earth shall we do? What are we to do?’

“I am perfectly certain that at the Last Judgment Constance will ask more questions than any of the examining Seraphs.

“‘Can't we do something?’ she persisted tearfully, as Esmé cantered easily along in front of our tired horses.

“Personally I was doing everything that occurred to me at the moment. I stormed and scolded and coaxed in English and French and gamekeeper language; I made absurd, ineffectual cuts in the air with my thongless hunting-crop; I hurled my sandwich case at the brute; in fact, I really don't know what more I could have done. And still we lumbered on through the deepening dusk, with that dark uncouth shape lumbering ahead of us, and a drone of lugubrious music floating in our ears. Suddenly Esmé bounded aside into some thick bushes, where we could not follow; the wail rose to a shriek and then stopped altogether. This part of the story I always hurry over, because it is really rather horrible. When the beast joined us again, after an absence of a few minutes, there was an air of patient understanding about him, as though he knew that he had done something of which we disapproved, but which he felt to be thoroughly justifiable.

“‘How can you let that ravening beast trot by your side?' asked Constance. She was looking more than ever like an albino beetroot.

“‘In the first place, I can't prevent it,’ I said; ‘and in the second place, whatever else he may be, I doubt if he's ravening at the present moment.’

“Constance shuddered. ‘Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?’ came another of her futile questions.

“‘The indications were all that way,’ I said; ‘on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do.’

“It was nearly pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the highroad. A flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same moment at uncomfortably close quarters. A thud and a sharp screeching yell followed a second later. The car drew up, and when I had ridden back to the spot I found a young man bending over a dark motionless mass lying by the roadside.

“‘You have killed my Esmé,’ I exclaimed bitterly.

“‘I’m so awfully sorry,’ said the young man; I keep dogs myself, so I know what you must feel about it. I’ll do anything I can in reparation.’

“‘Please bury him at once,’ I said; ‘that much I think I may ask of you.’

“‘Bring the spade, William,’ he called to the chauffeur. Evidently hasty roadside interments were contingencies that had been provided against.

“The digging of a sufficiently large grave took some little time. ‘I say, what a magnificent fellow,’ said the motorist as the corpse was rolled over into the trench. ‘I’m afraid he must have been rather a valuable animal.’

“‘He took second in the puppy class at Birmingham last year,’ I said resolutely.

“Constance snorted loudly.

“‘Don't cry, dear,’ I said brokenly; ‘it was all over in a moment. He couldn’t have suffered much.’

“‘Look here,’ said the young fellow desperately, ‘you simply must let me do something by way of reparation.’

“I refused sweetly, but as he persisted I let him have my address.

“Of course, we kept our own counsel as to the earlier episodes of the evening. Lord Pabham never advertised the loss of his hyaena; when a strictly fruit-eating animal strayed from his park a year or two previously he was called upon to give compensation in eleven cases of sheep-worrying and practically to re-stock his neighbours’ poultry-yards, and an escaped hyaena would have mounted up to something on the scale of a Government grant. The gipsies were equally unobtrusive over their missing offspring; I don’t suppose in large encampments they really know to a child or two how many they've got.”

The Baroness paused reflectively, and then continued:

“There was a sequel to the adventure, though. I got through the post a charming little diamond brooch, with the name Esmé set in a sprig of rosemary. Incidentally, too, I lost the friendship of Constance Broddle. You see, when I sold the brooch I quite properly refused to give her any share of the proceeds. I pointed out that the Esmé part of the affair was my own invention, and the hyaena part of it belonged to Lord Pabham, if it really was his hyaena, of which, of course, I’ve no proof.”