Saki / Munro The Complete Works of Saki

Illustrated Edition: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Sketches & Historical Works, including Reginald, The Chronicles of Clovis, Beasts and Super-Beasts, The Unbearable Bassington, The Death-Trap, The Westminster Alice
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-80-268-9391-2
Verlag: e-artnow
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 1375 Seiten

This meticulously edited Saki collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Novels: The Unbearable Bassington When William Came Short Stories: Reginald Reginald on Christmas Presents Reginald on the Academy Reginald at the Theatre Reginald's Peace Poem Reginald's Choir Treat Reginald on Worries Reginald on House-Parties Reginald at the Carlton Reginald on Besetting Sins Reginald's Drama Reginald on Tariffs Reginald's Christmas Revel Reginald's Rubaiyat The Innocence of Reginald Reginald in Russia The Reticence of Lady Anne The Lost Sanjak The Sex that Doesn't Shop The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water A Young-Turkish Catastrophe Judkin of the Parcels Gabriel-Ernest The Saint and the Goblin The Soul of Laploshka The Bag The Strategist Cross Currents The Baker's Dozen The Mouse The Chronicles of Clovis Esmé The Match-Maker Tobermory Mrs. Packletide's Tiger The Stampeding of Lady Bastable The Background Hermann the Irascible The Unrest-Cure The Jesting of Arlington Stringham Sredni Vashtar Adrian The Chaplet The Quest Wratislav The Easter Egg Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse that Helped The Music on the Hill The Story of St. Vespaluus The Way to the Dairy The Peace Offering The Peace of Mowsle Barton The Talking-Out of Tarrington The Hounds of Fate The Recessional A Matter of Sentiment The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope 'Ministers of Grace' The Remoulding of Groby Lington Beasts and Super-Beasts The Toys of Peace and Other Papers The Square Egg Birds on the Western Front The Gala Programme The Infernal Parliament The Achievement of the Cat The Old Town of Pskoff Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business The Comments of Moung Ka Dogged The East Wing The Almanac The Pond A Housing Problem The Holy War A Shot in the Dark A Sacrifice to Necessity Plays: The Death-Trap Karl-Ludwig's Window Other Works: The Westminster Alice The Rise of the Russian Empire

Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), better known by the pen name Saki, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Saki

Munro, H. H.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Gould, F. Carruthers

Leseproben

Gabriel-Ernest

Table of Contents "THERE is a wild beast in your woods," said the artist Cunningham, as he was being driven to the station. It was the only remark he had made during the drive, but as Van Cheele had talked incessantly his companion's silence had not been noticeable. "A stray fox or two and some resident weasels. Nothing more formidable," said Van Cheele. The artist said nothing. "What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, when they were on the platform. "Nothing. My imagination. Here is the train," said Cunningham. That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent rambles through his woodland property. He had a stuffed bittern in his study, and knew the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his aunt had possibly some justification in describing him as a great naturalist. At any rate, he was a great walker. It was his custom to take mental notes of everything he saw during his walks, not so much for the purpose of assisting contemporary science as to provide topics for conversation afterwards. When the bluebells began to show themselves in flower he made a point of informing every one of the fact; the season of the year might have warned his hearers of the likelihood of such an occurrence, but at least they felt that he was being absolutely frank with them. What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however, something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. On a shelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an oak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown limbs luxuriously in the sun. His wet hair, parted by a recent dive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that there was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards Van Cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness. It was an unexpected apparition, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in the novel process of thinking before he spoke. Where on earth could this wild-looking boy hail from? The miller's wife had lost a child some two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race, but that had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad. "What are you doing there?" he demanded. "Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy. "Where do you live?" "Here, in these woods." "You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele. "They are very nice woods," said the boy, with a touch of patronage in his voice. "But where do you sleep at night?" "I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time." Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling with a problem that was eluding him. "What do you feed on?" he asked. "Flesh," said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish, as though he were tasting it. "Flesh! What flesh?" "Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambs in their season, children when I can get any; they're usually too well locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting. It's quite two months since I tasted child-flesh." Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried to draw the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations. "You've talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on hares." (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile was hardly an apt one.) "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught." "At night I hunt on four feet," was the somewhat cryptic response. "I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele. The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird low laugh, that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like a snarl. "I don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company, especially at night." Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively uncanny about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster. "I can't have you staying in these woods," he declared authoritatively. "I fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house," said the boy. The prospect of this wild, nude animal in Van Cheele's primly ordered house was certainly an alarming one. "If you don't go I shall have to make you," said Van Cheele. The boy turned like a flash, plunged into the pool, and in a moment had flung his wet and glistening body half-way up the bank where Van Cheele was standing. In an otter the movement would not have been remarkable; in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently startling. His foot slipped as he made an involuntarily backward movement, and he found himself almost prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank, with those tigerish yellow eyes not very far from his own. Almost instinctively he half raised his hand to his throat. The boy laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl had nearly driven out the chuckle, and then, with another of his astonishing lightning movements, plunged out of view into a yielding tangle of weed and fern. "What an extraordinary wild animal!" said Van Cheele as he picked himself up. And then he recalled Cunningham's remark: "There is a wild beast in your woods." Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mind various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence of this astonishing young savage. Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry had been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably scarcer, and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off bodily from the hills. Was it possible that this wild boy was really hunting the countryside in company with some clever poacher dog? He had spoken of hunting "four-footed" by night, but then, again, he had hinted strangely at no dog caring to come near him, "especially at night." It was certainly puzzling. And then, as Van Cheele ran his mind over the various depredations that had been committed during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a dead stop, alike in his walk and his speculations. The child missing from the mill two months ago—the accepted theory was that it had tumbled into the millrace and been swept away; but the mother had always declared she had heard a shriek on the hill side of the house, in the opposite direction from the water. It was unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. Such dreadful things should not be said even in fun. Van Cheele, contrary to his usual wont, did not feel disposed to be communicative about his discovery in the wood. His position as a parish councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehow compromised by the fact that he was harbouring a personality of such doubtful repute on his property; there was even a possibility that a heavy bill of damages for raided lambs and poultry might be laid at his door. At dinner that night he was quite unusually silent. "Where's your voice gone to?" said his aunt. "One would think you had seen a wolf." Van Cheele, who was not familiar with the old saying, thought the remark rather foolish; if he had seen a wolf on his property his tongue would have been extraordinarily busy with the subject. At breakfast next morning Van Cheele was conscious that his feeling of uneasiness regarding yesterday's episode had not wholly disappeared, and he resolved to go by train to the neighbouring cathedral town, hunt up Cunningham, and learn from him what he had really seen that had prompted the remark about a wild beast in the woods. With this resolution taken, his usual cheerfulness partially returned, and he hummed a bright little melody as he sauntered to the morning-room for his customary cigarette. As he entered the room the melody made way abruptly for a pious invocation. Gracefully asprawl on the ottoman, in an attitude of almost exaggerated repose, was the boy of the woods. He was drier than when Van Cheele had last seen him, but no other alteration was noticeable in his toilet. "How dare you come here?" asked Van Cheele furiously. "You told me I was not to stay in the woods," said the boy calmly. "But not to come here. Supposing my aunt should see you!" And with a view to minimising that catastrophe, Van Cheele hastily obscured as much of his unwelcome guest as possible under the folds of a Morning Post. At that moment his aunt entered the room. "This is a poor boy who has lost his way—and lost his memory. He doesn't know who he is or where he comes from," explained Van Cheele desperately, glancing apprehensively at the waif's face to see whether he was going to add inconvenient candour to his other savage propensities. Miss Van Cheele was enormously interested. "Perhaps his underlinen is marked," she suggested. "He seems to have lost most of that, too," said Van Cheele, making frantic little grabs at the Morning Post to keep it in its place. A naked homeless child appealed to Miss Van Cheele as warmly as a stray kitten or derelict puppy would have done. "We must do all we can for him," she decided, and in a very short time a messenger, dispatched to the rectory, where a page-boy was kept, had returned with a suit of pantry clothes, and the necessary accessories of shirt, shoes, collar, etc. Clothed, clean, and groomed, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in Van Cheele's eyes, but his aunt found...