Short Stories of Saki (H. H. Munro)
Short Stories of Saki (H. H. Munro) |
|
|
Select a Category:Help keep this site online. |
The Chronicles of ClovisPublished: 1911 Saki's third collection of short stories continues the trend toward the macabre shown in Reginald in Russia and The Unbearable Bassington. Many of them feature a new hero, Clovis Sangrail, who is a similar disenchanted upper class youth to but has a more malicious streak than either Reginald or Comus. There are a fair number of stories in the collection, however, which do not involve Clovis. These tend to be the more supernatural, including The Music on the Hill, which is a further development of the idea of Gabriel-Ernest from Reginald in Russia of the savage demigod in the English countryside. Bringing this theme into a more domestic setting is one of Saki's most famous and most memorable stories, Shredni Vashtar, with its depiction of the childhood imagination as chilling as The Lord of the Flies. The Chronicles of Clovis and Beasts and Superbeasts are Saki's most consistently excellent collections. The stories here are marred in one or two places by the fact that witty remarks are repeated, but that it a minor blemish. INTRODUCTIONThere are good things which we want to share with the world and good things which we want to keep to ourselves.
ESMÉ"All hunting stories are the same," said Clovis; "just as all Turf
stories are the same, and all--"
THE MATCH-MAKERThe grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful
unobtrusiveness of one whose mission in life is to be ignored.
When the flight of time should really have rendered abstinence and
migration imperative the lighting apparatus would signal the fact
in the usual way.
TOBERMORYIt was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that
indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold
storage, and there is nothing to hunt--unless one is bounded on
the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully
gallop after fat red stags.
MRS. PACKLETIDE'S TIGERIt was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she should
shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended
on her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild
beast per million of inhabitants.
THE STAMPEDING OF LADY BASTABLE"It would be rather nice if you would put Clovis up for another
six days while I go up north to the MacGregors'," said Mrs.
Sangrail sleepily across the breakfast-table. It was her
invariable plan to speak in a sleepy, comfortable voice whenever
she was unusually keen about anything; it put people off their
guard, and they frequently fell in with her wishes before they had
realized that she was really asking for anything. Lady Bastable,
however, was not so easily taken unawares; possibly she knew that
voice and what it betokened--at any rate, she knew Clovis.
THE BACKGROUND"That woman's art-jargon tires me," said Clovis to his journalist friend. "She's so fond of talking of certain pictures as 'growing on one,' as though they were a sort of fungus." "That reminds me," said the journalist, "of the story of Henri Deplis. Have I ever told it you?" Clovis shook his head.
HERMANN THE IRASCIBLE - A STORY OF THE GREAT WEEPIt was in the second decade of the twentieth century, after the
Great Plague had devastated England, that Hermann the Irascible,
nicknamed also the Wise, sat on the British throne. The Mortal
Sickness had swept away the entire Royal Family, unto the third
and fourth generations, and thus it came to pass that Hermann the
Fourteenth of Saxe-Drachsen-Wachtelstein, who had stood thirtieth
in the order of succession, found himself one day ruler of the
British dominions within and beyond the seas.
THE UNREST-CURE0n the rack in the railway carriage immediately opposite Clovis was a solidly wrought travelling-bag, with a carefully written label, on which was inscribed, "J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough." Immediately below the rack sit the human embodiment of the label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately conversational.
THE JESTING OF ARLINGTON STRINGHAMArlington Stringham made a joke in the House of Commons. It was a thin House, and a very thin joke; something about the Anglo-Saxon race having a great many angles. It is possible that it was unintentional, but a fellow-member, who did not wish it to be supposed that he was asleep because his eyes were shut, laughed.
SREDNI VASHTARConradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his
professional opinion that the boy would not live another five
years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little,
but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for
nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and
guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of
the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other
two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed
up in himself and his imagination.
ADRIANA CHAPTER IN ACCLIMATIZATION His baptismal register spoke of him pessimistically as John Henry,
but he had left that behind with the other maladies of infancy,
and his friends knew him under the front-name of Adrian. His
mother lived in Bethnal Green, which was not altogether his fault;
one can discourage too much history in one's family, but one
cannot always prevent geography.
THE CHAPLETA strange stillness hung over the restaurant; it was one of those rare moments when the orchestra was not discoursing the strains of the Ice-cream Sailor waltz. "Did I ever tell you," asked Clovis of his friend, "the tragedy of music at mealtimes?
THE QUESTAn 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.
WRATISLAVThe 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.
THE EASTER EGGIt was distinctly hard lines for Lady Barbara, who came of good fighting stock, and was one of the bravest women of her generation, that her son should be so undisguisedly a coward. Whatever good qualities Lester Slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some respects charming, courage could certainly never he imputed to him. As a child he had suffered from childish timidity, as a boy from unboyish funk, and as a youth he had exchanged unreasoning fears for others which were more formidable from the fact of having a carefully thought-out basis.
FILBOID STUDGE, THE STORY OF A MOUSE THAT HELPED"I want to marry your daughter," said Mark Spayley with faltering eagerness. "I am only an artist with an income of two hundred a year, and she is the daughter of an enormously wealthy man, so I suppose you will think my offer a piece of presumption."
THE MUSIC ON THE HILLSylvia Seltoun ate her breakfast in the morning-room at Yessney with a pleasant sense of ultimate victory, such as a fervent Ironside might have permitted himself on the morrow of Worcester fight. She was scarcely pugnacious by temperament, but belonged to that more successful class of fighters who are pugnacious by circumstance. Fate had willed that her life should be occupied with a series of small struggles, usually with the odds slightly against her, and usually she had just managed to come through winning.
THE STORY OF ST. VESPALUUS"Tell me a story," said the Baroness, staring out despairingly at the rain; it was that light, apologetic sort of rain that looks as if it was going to leave off every minute and goes on for the greater part of the afternoon. "What sort of story?" asked Clovis, giving his croquet mallet a valedictory shove into retirement.
THE WAY TO THE DAIRYThe Baroness and Clovis sat in a much-frequented corner of the Park exchanging biographical confidences about the long succession of passers-by. "Who are those depressed-looking young women who have just gone by?" asked the Baroness; "they have the air of people who have bowed to destiny and are not quite sure whether the salute will be returned."
THE PEACE OFFERING"I want you to help me in getting up a dramatic entertainment of some sort," said the Baroness to Clovis. "You see, there's been an election petition down here, and a member unseated and no end of bitterness and ill-feeling, and the County is socially divided against itself. I thought a play of some kind would be an excellent opportunity for bringing people together again, and giving them something to think of besides tiresome political squabbles."
THE PEACE OF MOWSLE BARTONCrefton Lockyer sat at his ease, an ease alike of body and soul, in the little patch of ground, half-orchard and half-garden, that abutted on the farmyard at Mowsle Barton. After the stress and noise of long years of city life, the repose and peace of the hill-begirt homestead struck on his senses with an almost dramatic intensity. Time and space seemed to lose their meaning and their abruptness; the minutes slid away into hours, and the meadows and fallows sloped away into middle distance, softly and imperceptibly. Wild weeds of the hedgerow straggled into the flower-garden, and wallflowers and garden bushes made counter-raids into farmyard and lane.
THE TALKING-OUT OF TARRINGTON"Heavens!" exclaimed the aunt of Clovis, "here's some one I know bearing down on us. I can't remember his name, but he lunched with us once in Town. Tarrington--yes, that's it. He's heard of the picnic I'm giving for the Princess, and he'll cling to me like a lifebelt till I give him an invitation; then he'll ask if he may bring all his wives and mothers and sisters with him. That's the worst of these small watering-places; one can't escape from anybody."
THE HOUNDS OF FATEIn the fading light of a close dull autumn afternoon Martin Stoner plodded his way along muddy lanes and rut-seamed cart tracks that led he knew not exactly whither. Somewhere in front of him, he fancied, lay the sea, and towards the sea his footsteps seemed persistently turning; why he was struggling wearily forward to that goal he could scarcely have explained, unless he was possessed by the same instinct that turns a hard-pressed stag cliffward in its last extremity. In his case the hounds of Fate were certainly pressing him with unrelenting insistence; hunger, fatigue, and despairing hopelessness had numbed his brain, and he could scarcely summon sufficient energy to wonder what underlying impulse was driving him onward.
THE RECESSIONALClovis sat in the hottest zone but two of a Turkish bath, alternately inert in statuesque contemplation and rapidly manoeuvring a fountain-pen over the pages of a note-book. "Don't interrupt me with your childish prattle," he observed to Bertie van Tahn, who had slung himself languidly into a neighbouring chair and looked conversationally inclined; "I'm writing deathless verse."
A MATTER OF SENTIMENTIt was the eve of the great race, and scarcely a member of Lady Susan's house-party had as yet a single bet on. It was one of those unsatisfactory years when one horse held a commanding market position, not by reason of any general belief in its crushing superiority, but because it was extremely difficult to pitch on any other candidate to whom to pin ones faith.
THE SECRET SIN OF SEPTIMUS BROPE"Who and what is Mr. Brope?" demanded the aunt of Clovis suddenly. Mrs. Riversedge, who had been snipping off the heads of defunct roses, and thinking of nothing in particular, sprang hurriedly to mental attention. She was one of those old-fashioned hostesses who consider that one ought to know something about one's guests, and that the something ought to be to their credit.
"MINISTERS OF GRACE"Although he was scarcely yet out of his teens, the Duke of Scaw was already marked out as a personality widely differing from others of his caste and period. Not in externals; therein he conformed correctly to type. His hair was faintly reminiscent of Houbigant, and at the other end of him his shoes exhaled the right SOUPÇON of harness-room; his socks compelled one's attention without losing one's respect; and his attitude in repose had just that suggestion of Whistler's mother, so becoming in the really young. It was within that the trouble lay, if trouble it could be accounted, which marked him apart from his fellows.
THE REMOULDING OF GROBY LINGTON"A man is known by the company he keeps." In the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house Groby Lington fidgeted away the passing minutes with the demure restlessness of advanced middle age. About a quarter of an hour would have to elapse before it would be time to say his good-byes and make his way across the village green to the station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces.
|
Map started on Nov. 5, 2009
