Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a
man who is not certain whether he is entering a dovecote or a bomb
factory, and is prepared for either eventuality. The little
domestic quarrel over the luncheon-table had not been fought to a
definite finish, and the question was how far Lady Anne was in a
mood to renew or forgo hostilities. Her pose in the arm-chair by
the tea-table was rather elaborately rigid; in the gloom of a
December afternoon Egbert's pince-nez did not materially help him to
discern the expression of her face.
By way of breaking whatever ice might be floating on the surface he
made a remark about a dim religious light. He or Lady Anne were
accustomed to make that remark between 4.30 and 6 on winter and late
autumn evenings; it was a part of their married life. There was no
recognised rejoinder to it, and Lady Anne made none.
Don Tarquinio lay astretch on the Persian rug, basking in the
firelight with superb indifference to the possible ill-humour of
Lady Anne. His pedigree was as flawlessly Persian as the rug, and
his ruff was coming into the glory of its second winter. The page-
boy, who had Renaissance tendencies, had christened him Don
Tarquinio. Left to themselves, Egbert and Lady Anne would
unfailingly have called him Fluff, but they were not obstinate.
Egbert poured himself out some tea. As the silence gave no sign of
breaking on Lady Anne's initiative, he braced himself for another
Yermak effort.
"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 Iphigenie
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 Yeomen 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 milkjug 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 dare say 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 continuations where the
human left off.
The bullfinch recommenced its air from Iphigenie 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 dare say," 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 that than 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 diner," 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
wing-beating 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 END-
Hector Hugh Munro] Saki's short story: The Reticence Of Lady Anne
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