The Saki Megapack

by H. H. Munro

  “And now the moment had arrived for the serving of the great dish, the dish which world-weary Grand Dukes and market-obsessed money magnates counted among their happiest memories. And at the same moment something else happened. The leader of the highly salaried orchestra placed his violin caressingly against his chin, lowered his eyelids, and floated into a sea of melody.

  “‘Hark!’ said most of the diners, ‘he is playing “The Chaplet.”’

  “They knew it was ‘The Chaplet’ because they had heard it played at luncheon and afternoon tea, and at supper the night before, and had not had time to forget.

  “‘Yes, he is playing “The Chaplet,”’ they reassured one another. The general voice was unanimous on the subject. The orchestra had already played it eleven times that day, four times by desire and seven times from force of habit, but the familiar strains were greeted with the rapture due to a revelation. A murmur of much humming rose from half the tables in the room, and some of the more overwrought listeners laid down knife and fork in order to be able to burst in with loud clappings at the earliest permissible moment.

  “And the Canetons à la mode d’Amblève? In stupefied, sickened wonder Aristide watched them grow cold in total neglect, or suffer the almost worse indignity of perfunctory pecking and listless munching while the banqueters lavished their approval and applause on the music-makers. Calves’ liver and bacon, with parsley sauce, could hardly have figured more ignominiously in the evening’s entertainment. And while the master of culinary art leaned back against the sheltering pillar, choking with a horrible brain-searing rage that could find no outlet for its agony, the orchestra leader was bowing his acknowledgments of the hand-clappings that rose in a storm around him. Turning to his colleagues he nodded the signal for an encore. But before the violin had been lifted anew into position there came from the shadow of the pillar an explosive negative.

  “‘Noh! Noh! You do not play thot again!’

  “The musician turned in furious astonishment. Had he taken warning from the look in the other man’s eyes he might have acted differently. But the admiring plaudits were ringing in his ears, and he snarled out sharply, ‘That is for me to decide.’

  “‘Noh! You play thot never again,’ shouted the chef, and the next moment he had flung himself violently upon the loathed being who had supplanted him in the world’s esteem. A large metal tureen, filled to the brim with steaming soup, had just been placed on a side table in readiness for a late party of diners; before the waiting staff or the guests had time to realize what was happening, Aristide had dragged his struggling victim up to the table and plunged his head deep down into the almost boiling contents of the tureen. At the further end of the room the diners were still spasmodically applauding in view of an encore.

  “Whether the leader of the orchestra died from drowning by soup, or from the shock to his professional vanity, or was scalded to death, the doctors were never wholly able to agree. Monsieur Aristide Saucourt, who now lives in complete retirement, always inclined to the drowning theory.”

  THE QUEST

  An unwonted peace hung over the Villa Elsinore, broken, however, at frequent intervals, by clamorous lamentations suggestive of bewildered bereavement. The Momebys had lost their infant child; hence the peace which its absence entailed; they were looking for it in wild, undisciplined fashion, giving tongue the whole time, which accounted for the outcry which swept through house and garden whenever they returned to try the home coverts anew. Clovis, who was temporarily and unwillingly a paying guest at the villa, had been dozing in a hammock at the far end of the garden when Mrs. Momeby had broken the news to him.

  “We’ve lost Baby,” she screamed.

  “Do you mean that it’s dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at cards and lost it that way?” asked Clovis lazily.

  “He was toddling about quite happily on the lawn,” said Mrs. Momeby tearfully, “and Arnold had just come in, and I was asking him what sort of sauce he would like with the asparagus—”

  “I hope he said hollandaise,” interrupted Clovis, with a show of quickened interest, “because if there’s anything I hate—”

  “And all of a sudden I missed Baby,” continued Mrs. Momeby in a shriller tone. “We’ve hunted high and low, in house and garden and outside the gates, and he’s nowhere to be seen.”

  “Is he anywhere to be heard?” asked Clovis; “if not, he must be at least two miles away.”

  “But where? And how?” asked the distracted mother.

  “Perhaps an eagle or a wild beast has carried him off,” suggested Clovis.

  “There aren’t eagles and wild beasts in Surrey,” said Mrs. Momeby, but a note of horror had crept into her voice.

  “They escape now and then from travelling shows. Sometimes I think they let them get loose for the sake of the advertisement. Think what a sensational headline it would make in the local papers: ‘Infant son of prominent Nonconformist devoured by spotted hyaena.’ Your husband isn’t a prominent Nonconformist, but his mother came of Wesleyan stock, and you must allow the newspapers some latitude.”

  “But we should have found his remains,” sobbed Mrs. Momeby.

  “If the hyaena was really hungry and not merely toying with his food there wouldn’t be much in the way of remains. It would be like the small-boy-and-apple story—there ain’t going to be no core.”

  Mrs. Momeby turned away hastily to seek comfort and counsel in some other direction. With the selfish absorption of young motherhood she entirely disregarded Clovis’s obvious anxiety about the asparagus sauce. Before she had gone a yard, however, the click of the side gate caused her to pull up sharp. Miss Gilpet, from the Villa Peterhof, had come over to hear details of the bereavement. Clovis was already rather bored with the story, but Mrs. Momeby was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the ninetieth time of telling as in the first.

  “Arnold had just come in; he was complaining of rheumatism—”

  “There are so many things to complain of in this household that it would never have occurred to me to complain of rheumatism,” murmured Clovis.

  “He was complaining of rheumatism,” continued Mrs. Momeby, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure as well.

  She was again interrupted.

  “There is no such thing as rheumatism,” said Miss Gilpet. She said it with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced claret in the wine-list is no more. She did not proceed, however, to offer the alternative of some more expensive malady, but denied the existence of them all.

  Mrs. Momeby’s temper began to shine out through her grief.

  “I suppose you’ll say next that Baby hasn’t really disappeared.”

  “He has disappeared,” conceded Miss Gilpet, “but only because you haven’t sufficient faith to find him. It’s only lack of faith on your part that prevents him from being restored to you safe and well.”

  “But if he’s been eaten in the meantime by a hyaena and partly digested,” said Clovis, who clung affectionately to his wild beast theory, “surely some ill-effects would be noticeable?”

  Miss Gilpet was rather staggered by this complication of the question.

  “I feel sure that a hyaena has not eaten him,” she said lamely.

  “The hyaena may be equally certain that it has. You see, it may have just as much faith as you have, and more special knowledge as to the present whereabouts of the baby.”

  Mrs. Momeby was in tears again. “If you have faith,” she sobbed, struck by a happy inspiration, “won’t you find our little Erik for us? I am sure you have powers that are denied to us.”

  Rose-Marie Gilpet was thoroughly sincere in her adherence to Christian Science principles; whether she understood or correctly expounded them the learned in such matters may best decide. In the present case she was undoubtedly confronted with a great opportunity, and as she started f
orth on her vague search she strenuously summoned to her aid every scrap of faith that she possessed. She passed out into the bare and open high road, followed by Mrs. Momeby’s warning, “It’s no use going there, we’ve searched there a dozen times.” But Rose-Marie’s ears were already deaf to all things save self-congratulation; for sitting in the middle of the highway, playing contentedly with the dust and some faded buttercups, was a white-pinafored baby with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale-blue ribbon. Taking first the usual feminine precaution of looking to see that no motor-car was on the distant horizon, Rose-Marie dashed at the child and bore it, despite its vigorous opposition, in through the portals of Elsinore. The child’s furious screams had already announced the fact of its discovery, and the almost hysterical parents raced down the lawn to meet their restored offspring. The aesthetic value of the scene was marred in some degree by Rose-Marie’s difficulty in holding the struggling infant, which was borne wrong-end foremost towards the agitated bosom of its family. “Our own little Erik come back to us,” cried the Momebys in unison; as the child had rammed its fists tightly into its eye-sockets and nothing could be seen of its face but a widely gaping mouth, the recognition was in itself almost an act of faith.

  “Is he glad to get back to Daddy and Mummy again?” crooned Mrs. Momeby; the preference which the child was showing for its dust and buttercup distractions was so marked that the question struck Clovis as being unnecessarily tactless.

  “Give him a ride on the roly-poly,” suggested the father brilliantly, as the howls continued with no sign of early abatement. In a moment the child had been placed astride the big garden roller and a preliminary tug was given to set it in motion. From the hollow depths of the cylinder came an earsplitting roar, drowning even the vocal efforts of the squalling baby, and immediately afterwards there crept forth a white-pinafored infant with a mop of tow-coloured hair tied over one temple with a pale blue ribbon. There was no mistaking either the features or the lung-power of the new arrival.

  “Our own little Erik,” screamed Mrs. Momeby, pouncing on him and nearly smothering him with kisses; “did he hide in the roly-poly to give us all a big fright?”

  This was the obvious explanation of the child’s sudden disappearance and equally abrupt discovery. There remained, however, the problem of the interloping baby, which now sat whimpering on the lawn in a disfavour as chilling as its previous popularity had been unwelcome. The Momebys glared at it as though it had wormed its way into their short-lived affections by heartless and unworthy pretences. Miss Gilpet’s face took on an ashen tinge as she stared helplessly at the bunched-up figure that had been such a gladsome sight to her eyes a few moments ago.

  “When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands,” quoted Clovis to himself.

  Rose-Marie was the first to break the silence.

  “If that is Erik you have in your arms, who is—that?”

  “That, I think, is for you to explain,” said Mrs. Momeby stiffly.

  “Obviously,” said Clovis, “it’s a duplicate Erik that your powers of faith called into being. The question is: What are you going to do with him?”

  The ashen pallor deepened in Rose-Marie’s cheeks. Mrs. Momeby clutched the genuine Erik closer to her side, as though she feared that her uncanny neighbour might out of sheer pique turn him into a bowl of gold-fish.

  “I found him sitting in the middle of the road,” said Rose-Marie weakly.

  “You can’t take him back and leave him there,” said Clovis; “the highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for disused miracles.”

  Rose-Marie wept. The proverb “Weep and you weep alone,” broke down as badly on application as most of its kind. Both babies were wailing lugubriously, and the parent Momebys had scarcely recovered from their earlier lachrymose condition. Clovis alone maintained an unruffled cheerfulness.

  “Must I keep him always?” asked Rose-Marie dolefully.

  “Not always,” said Clovis consolingly; “he can go into the Navy when he’s thirteen.” Rose-Marie wept afresh.

  “Of course,” added Clovis, “there may be no end of a bother about his birth certificate. You’ll have to explain matters to the Admiralty, and they’re dreadfully hidebound.”

  It was rather a relief when a breathless nursemaid from the Villa Charlottenburg over the way came running across the lawn to claim little Percy, who had slipped out of the front gate and disappeared like a twinkling from the high road.

  And even then Clovis found it necessary to go in person to the kitchen to make sure about the asparagus sauce.

  WRATISLAV

  The Gräfin’s two elder sons had made deplorable marriages. It was, observed Clovis, a family habit. The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage at all.

  “There is certainly this much to be said for viciousness,” said the Gräfin, “it keeps boys out of mischief.”

  “Does it?” asked the Baroness Sophie, not by way of questioning the statement, but with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk otherwise than inanely.

  “I don’t know why I shouldn’t talk cleverly,” she would complain; “my mother was considered a brilliant conversationalist.”

  “These things have a way of skipping one generation,” said the Gräfin.

  “That seems so unjust,” said Sophie; “one doesn’t object to one’s mother having outshone one as a clever talker, but I must admit that I should be rather annoyed if my daughters talked brilliantly.”

  “Well, none of them do,” said the Gräfin consolingly.

  “I don’t know about that,” said the Baroness, promptly veering round in defence of her offspring. “Elsa said something quite clever on Thursday about the Triple Alliance. Something about it being like a paper umbrella, that was all right as long as you didn’t take it out in the rain. It’s not every one who could say that.”

  “Every one has said it; at least every one that I know. But then I know very few people.”

  “I don’t think you’re particularly agreeable to-day.”

  “I never am. Haven’t you noticed that women with a really perfect profile like mine are seldom even moderately agreeable?”

  “I don’t think your profile is so perfect as all that,” said the Baroness.

  “It would be surprising if it wasn’t. My mother was one of the most noted classical beauties of her day.”

  “These things sometimes skip a generation, you know,” put in the Baroness, with the breathless haste of one to whom repartee comes as rarely as the finding of a gold-handled umbrella.

  “My dear Sophie,” said the Gräfin sweetly, “that isn’t in the least bit clever; but you do try so hard that I suppose I oughtn’t to discourage you. Tell me something: has it ever occurred to you that Elsa would do very well for Wratislav? It’s time he married somebody, and why not Elsa?”

  “Elsa marry that dreadful boy!” gasped the Baroness.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” observed the Gräfin.

  “Elsa isn’t a beggar!”

  “Not financially, or I shouldn’t have suggested the match. But she’s getting on, you know, and has no pretensions to brains or looks or anything of that sort.”

  “You seem to forget that she’s my daughter.”

  “That shows my generosity. But, seriously, I don’t see what there is against Wratislav. He has no debts—at least, nothing worth speaking about.”

  “But think of his reputation! If half the things they say about him are true—”

  “Probably three-quarters of them are. But what of it? You don’t want an archangel for a son-in-law.”

  “I don’t want Wratislav. My poor Elsa would be miserable with him.”

  “A little misery wouldn’t matter very much with her; it would go so well with the way she d
oes her hair, and if she couldn’t get on with Wratislav she could always go and do good among the poor.”

  The Baroness picked up a framed photograph from the table.

  “He certainly is very handsome,” she said doubtfully; adding even more doubtfully, “I dare say dear Elsa might reform him.”

  The Gräfin had the presence of mind to laugh in the right key.

  * * * *

  Three weeks later the Gräfin bore down upon the Baroness Sophie in a foreign bookseller’s shop in the Graben, where she was, possibly, buying books of devotion, though it was the wrong counter for them.

  “I’ve just left the dear children at the Rodenstahls’,” was the Gräfin’s greeting.

  “Were they looking very happy?” asked the Baroness.

  “Wratislav was wearing some new English clothes, so, of course, he was quite happy. I overheard him telling Toni a rather amusing story about a nun and a mousetrap, which won’t bear repetition. Elsa was telling every one else a witticism about the Triple Alliance being like a paper umbrella—which seems to bear repetition with Christian fortitude.”