The Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated). Saki
well, ‘dominion over palm and pine,’ you know,” quoted the Duchess hopefully; “of course we mustn’t forget that we’re all part of the great Anglo-Saxon Empire.”
“Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem. A very pleasant suburb, I admit, and quite a charming Jerusalem. But still a suburb.”
“Really, to be told one’s living in a suburb when one is conscious of spreading the benefits of civilisation all over the world! Philanthropy—I suppose you will say that is a comfortable delusion; and yet even you must admit that whenever want or misery or starvation is known to exist, however distant or difficult of access, we instantly organise relief on the most generous scale, and distribute it, if need be, to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
The Duchess paused, with a sense of ultimate triumph. She had made the same observation at a drawing-room meeting, and it had been extremely well received.
“I wonder,” said Reginald, “if you have ever walked down the Embankment on a winter night?”
“Gracious, no, child! Why do you ask?”
“I didn’t; I only wondered. And even your philanthropy, practised in a world where everything is based on competition, must have a debit as well as a credit account. The young ravens cry for food.”
“And are fed.”
“Exactly. Which presupposes that something else is fed upon.”
“Oh, you’re simply exasperating. You’ve been reading Nietzsche till you haven’t got any sense of moral proportion left. May I ask if you are governed by any laws of conduct whatever?”
“There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one’s own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden.”
“The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and innocent.”
“Now we are only nice. One must specialise in these days. Which reminds me of the man I read of in some sacred book who was given a choice of what he most desired. And because he didn’t ask for titles and honours and dignities, but only for immense wealth, these other things came to him also.”
“I am sure you didn’t read about him in any sacred book.”
“Yes; I fancy you will find him in Debrett.”
Reginald's Peace Poem
“I’m writing a poem on Peace,” said Reginald, emerging from a sweeping operation through a tin of mixed biscuits, in whose depths a macaroon or two might yet be lurking.
“Something of the kind seems to have been attempted already,” said the Other.
“Oh, I know; but I may never have the chance again. Besides, I’ve got a new fountain pen. I don’t pretend to have gone on any very original lines; in writing about Peace the thing is to say what everybody else is saying, only to say it better. It begins with the usual ornithological emotion—
‘When the widgeon westward winging
Heard the folk Vereeniginging,
Heard the shouting and the singing’”—
“Vereeniginging is good, but why widgeon?”
“Why not? Anything that winged westward would naturally begin with a w.”
“Need it wing westward?”
“The bird must go somewhere. You wouldn’t have it hang around and look foolish. Then I’ve brought in something about the heedless hartebeest galloping over the deserted veldt.”
“Of course you know it’s practically extinct in those regions?”
“I can’t help that, it gallops so nicely. I make it have all sorts of unexpected yearnings—
‘Mother, may I go and maffick,
Tear around and hinder traffic?’
Of course you’ll say there would be no traffic worth bothering about on the bare and sun-scorched veldt, but there’s no other word that rhymes with maffick.”
“Seraphic?”
Reginald considered. “It might do, but I’ve got a lot about angels later on. You must have angels in a Peace poem; I know dreadfully little about their habits.”
“They can do unexpected things, like the hartebeest.”
“Of course. Then I turn on London, the City of Dreadful Nocturnes, resonant with hymns of joy and thanksgiving—
‘And the sleeper, eye unlidding,
Heard a voice for ever bidding
Much farewell to Dolly Gray;
Turning weary on his truckle-
Bed he heard the honey-suckle
Lauded in apiarian lay.’
Longfellow at his best wrote nothing like that.”
“I agree with you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve a sweet temper, but I can’t stand being agreed with. And I’m so worried about the aasvogel.”
Reginald stared dismally at the biscuit-tin, which now presented an unattractive array of rejected cracknels.
“I believe,” he murmured, “if I could find a woman with an unsatisfied craving for cracknels, I should marry her.”
“What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?” asked the Other sympathetically.
“Oh, simply that there’s no rhyme for it. I thought about it all the time I was dressing—it’s dreadfully bad for one to think whilst one’s dressing—and all lunch-time, and I’m still hung up over it. I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares. I’m afraid I shall have to drop the aasvogel, and it did give such lovely local colour to the thing.”
“Still you’ve got the heedless hartebeest.”
“And quite a decorative bit of moral admonition—when you’ve worried the meaning out—
‘Cease, War, thy bubbling madness that the wine shares,
And bid thy legions turn their swords to mine shares.’
Mine shares seems to fit the case better than ploughshares. There’s lots more about the blessings of Peace, shall I go on reading it?”
“If I must make a choice, I think I would rather they went on with the war.”
Reginald's Choir Treat
“Never,” wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, “be a pioneer. It’s the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.”
Reginald, in his way, was a pioneer.
None of the rest of his family had anything approaching Titian hair or a sense of humour, and they used primroses as a table decoration.
It follows that they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.
Therefore the family was relieved when the vicar’s