Гектор Манро - The Complete Short Stories of Saki

‘My remark at lunch had a purely academic application,’ he announced; ‘you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it.’

Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. The bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from Iphigénie en Tauride . Egbert recognised it immediately, because it was the only air the bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the reputation for whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something from The Yeoman of the Guard , which was their favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned towards the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, staggering into a courtyard full of pale swooning women, and marginally noted ‘Bad News’, suggested to their minds a distinct interpretation of some military catastrophe. They could see what it was meant to convey, and explain it to friends of duller intelligence.

The silence continued. As a rule Lady Anne’s displeasure became articulate and markedly voluble after four minutes of introductory muteness. Egbert seized the milk-jug and poured some of its contents into Don Tarquinio’s saucer; as the saucer was already full to the brim an unsightly overflow was the result. Don Tarquinio looked on with a surprised interest that evanesced into elaborate unconsciousness when he was appealed to by Egbert to come and drink up some of the spilt matter. Don Tarquinio was prepared to play many roles in life, but a vacuum carpet-cleaner was not one of them.

‘Don’t you think we’re being rather foolish?’ said Egbert cheerfully.

If Lady Anne thought so she didn’t say so.

‘I daresay the fault has been partly on my side,’ continued Egbert, with evaporating cheerfulness. ‘After all, I’m only human, you know. You seem to forget that I’m only human.’

He insisted on the point, as if there had been unfounded suggestions that he was built on Satyr lines, with goat continuation where the human left off.

The bullfinch recommenced its air from Iphigénie en Tauride . Egbert began to feel depressed. Lady Anne was not drinking her tea. Perhaps she was feeling unwell. But when Lady Anne felt unwell she was not wont to be reticent on the subject. ‘No one knows what I suffer from indigestion’ was one of her favourite statements; but the lack of knowledge can only have been caused by defective listening; the amount of information available on the subject would have supplied material for a monograph.

Evidently Lady Anne was not feeling unwell.

Egbert began to think he was being unreasonably dealt with; naturally he began to make concessions.

‘I daresay,’ he observed, taking as central a position on the hearth-rug as Don Tarquinio could be persuaded to concede him, ‘I may have been to blame. I am willing, if I can thereby restore things to a happier standpoint, to undertake to lead a better life.’

He wondered vaguely how it would be possible. Temptations came to him, in middle age, tentatively and without insistence, like a neglected butcher-boy who asks for a Christmas box in February for no more hopeful reason than that he didn’t get one in December. He had no more idea of succumbing to them than he had of purchasing the fish-knives and fur boas that ladies are impelled to sacrifice through the medium of advertisement columns during twelve months of the year. Still, there was something impressive in this unasked-for renunciation of possibly latent enormities.

Lady Anne showed no sign of being impressed.

Egbert looked at her nervously through his glasses. To get the worst of an argument with her was no new experience. To get the worst of a monologue was a humiliating novelty.

‘I shall go and dress for dinner,’ he announced in a voice into which he intended some shade of sternness to creep.

At the door a final access of weakness impelled him to make a further appeal.

‘Aren’t we being very silly?’

‘A fool,’ was Don Tarquinio’s mental comment as the door closed on Egbert’s retreat. Then he lifted his velvet forepaws in the air and leapt lightly on to a bookshelf immediately under the bullfinch’s cage. It was the first time he had seemed to notice the bird’s existence, but he was carrying out a long-formed theory of action with the precision of mature deliberation. The bullfinch, who had fancied himself something of a despot, depressed himself of a sudden into a third of his normal displacement; then he fell to a helpless wingbeating and shrill cheeping. He had cost twenty-seven shillings without the cage, but Lady Anne made no sign of interfering. She had been dead for two hours.

The prison Chaplain entered the condemned’s cell for the last time, to give such consolation as he might.

‘The only consolation I crave for,’ said the condemned, ‘is to tell my story in its entirety to some one who will at least give it a respectful hearing.’

‘We must not be too long over it,’ said the Chaplain, looking at his watch.

The condemned repressed a shiver and commenced.

‘Most people will be of opinion that I am paying the penalty of my own violent deeds. In reality I am a victim to a lack of specialisation in my education and character.’

‘Lack of specialisation!’ said the Chaplain.

‘Yes. If I had been known as one of the few men in England familiar with the fauna of the Outer Hebrides, or able to repeat stanzas of Camoëns’ poetry in the original, I should have had no difficulty in proving my identity in the crisis when my identity became a matter of life and death for me. But my education was merely a moderately good one, and my temperament was of the general order that avoids specialisation. I know a little in a general way about gardening and history and old masters, but I could never tell you off-hand whether “Stella van der Loopen” was a chrysanthemum or a heroine of the American War of Independence, or something by Romney in the Louvre.’

The Chaplain shifted uneasily in his seat. Now that the alternatives had been suggested they all seemed dreadfully possible.

‘I fell in love, or thought I did, with the local doctor’s wife,’ continued the condemned. ‘Why I should have done so, I cannot say, for I do not remember that she possessed any particular attractions of mind or body. On looking back at past events it seems to me that she must have been distinctly ordinary, but I suppose the doctor had fallen in love with her once, and what man has done man can do. She appeared to be pleased with the attentions which I paid her, and to that extent I suppose I might say she encouraged me, but I think she was honestly unaware that I meant anything more than a little neighbourly interest. When one is face to face with Death one wishes to be just.’

The Chaplain murmured approval. ‘At any rate, she was genuinely horrified when I took advantage of the doctor’s absence one evening to declare what I believed to be my passion. She begged me to pass out of her life and I could scarcely do otherwise than agree, though I hadn’t the dimmest idea of how it was to be done. In novels and plays I knew it was a regular occurrence, and if you mistook a lady’s sentiments or intentions you went off to India and did things on the frontier as a matter of course. As I stumbled along the doctor’s carriage-drive I had no very clear idea as to what my line of action was to be, but I had a vague feeling that I must look at the Times Atlas before going to bed. Then, on the dark and lonely highway, I came suddenly on a dead body.’

The Chaplain’s interest in the story visibly quickened.