"The tea will be quite cold, you'd better ring for some more," said
the Dowager Lady Beanford.
Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with
imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis
Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the
Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her
sister, Jane Thropplestance, who was some years her junior, was
chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in
Middlesex.
"I've really been unusually clever this afternoon," she remarked
gaily, as she rang for the tea. "I've called on all the people I
meant to call on; and I've done all the shopping that I set out to
do. I even remembered to try and match that silk for you at
Harrod's, but I'd forgotten to bring the pattern with me, so it was
no use. I really think that was the only important thing I forgot
during the whole afternoon. Quite wonderful for me, isn't it?"
"What have you done with Louise?" asked her sister. "Didn't you
take her out with you? You said you were going to."
"Good gracious," exclaimed Jane, "what have I done with Louise? I
must have left her somewhere."
"But where?"
"That's just it. Where have I left her? I can't remember if the
Carrywoods were at home or if I just left cards. If there were at
home I may have left Louise there to play bridge. I'll go and
telephone to Lord Carrywood and find out."
"Is that you, Lord Carrywood?" she queried over the telephone; "it's
me, Jane Thropplestance. I want to know, have you seen Louise?"
"'Louise,'" came the answer, "it's been my fate to see it three
times. At first, I must admit, I wasn't impressed by it, but the
music grows on one after a bit. Still, I don't think I want to see
it again just at present. Were you going to offer me a seat in your
box?"
"Not the opera 'Louise'--my niece, Louise Thropplestance. I thought
I might have left her at your house."
"You left cards on us this afternoon, I understand, but I don't
think you left a niece. The footman would have been sure to have
mentioned it if you had. Is it going to be a fashion to leave
nieces on people as well as cards? I hope not; some of these houses
in Berkeley-square have practically no accommodation for that sort
of thing."
"She's not at the Carrywoods'," announced Jane, returning to her
tea; "now I come to think of it, perhaps I left her at the silk
counter at Selfridge's. I may have told her to wait there a moment
while I went to look at the silks in a better light, and I may
easily have forgotten about her when I found I hadn't your pattern
with me. In that case she's still sitting there. She wouldn't move
unless she was told to; Louise has no initiative."
"You said you tried to match the silk at Harrod's," interjected the
dowager.
"Did I? Perhaps it was Harrod's. I really don't remember. It was
one of those places where every one is so kind and sympathetic and
devoted that one almost hates to take even a reel of cotton away
from such pleasant surroundings."
"I think you might have taken Louise away. I don't like the idea of
her being there among a lot of strangers. Supposing some
unprincipled person was to get into conversation with her."
"Impossible. Louise has no conversation. I've never discovered a
single topic on which she'd anything to say beyond 'Do you think so?
I dare say you're right.' I really thought her reticence about the
fall of the Ribot Ministry was ridiculous, considering how much her
dear mother used to visit Paris. This bread and butter is cut far
too thin; it crumbles away long before you can get it to your mouth.
One feels so absurd, snapping at one's food in mid-air, like a trout
leaping at may-fly."
"I am rather surprised," said the dowager, "that you can sit there
making a hearty tea when you've just lost a favourite niece."
"You talk as if I'd lost her in a churchyard sense, instead of
having temporarily mislaid her. I'm sure to remember presently
where I left her."
"You didn't visit any place of devotion, did you? If you've left
her mooning about Westminster Abbey or St. Peter's, Eaton Square,
without being able to give any satisfactory reason why she's there,
she'll be seized under the Cat and Mouse Act and sent to Reginald
McKenna."
"That would be extremely awkward," said Jane, meeting an irresolute
piece of bread and butter halfway; "we hardly know the McKennas, and
it would be very tiresome having to telephone to some unsympathetic
private secretary, describing Louise to him and asking to have her
sent back in time for dinner. Fortunately, I didn't go to any place
of devotion, though I did get mixed up with a Salvation Army
procession. It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with
them, they're so absolutely different to what they used to be when I
first remember them in the 'eighties. They used to go about then
unkempt and dishevelled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world,
and now they're spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like
a geranium bed with religious convictions. Laura Kettleway was
going on about them in the lift of the Dover Street Tube the other
day, saying what a lot of good work they did, and what a loss it
would have been if they'd never existed. 'If they had never
existed,' I said, 'Granville Barker would have been certain to have
invented something that looked exactly like them.' If you say
things like that, quite loud, in a Tube lift, they always sound like
epigrams."
"I think you ought to do something about Louise," said the dowager.
"I'm trying to think whether she was with me when I called on Ada
Spelvexit. I rather enjoyed myself there. Ada was trying, as
usual, to ram that odious Koriatoffski woman down my throat, knowing
perfectly well that I detest her, and in an unguarded moment she
said: 'She's leaving her present house and going to Lower Seymour
Street.' 'I dare say she will, if she stays there long enough,' I
said. Ada didn't see it for about three minutes, and then she was
positively uncivil. No, I am certain I didn't leave Louise there."
"If you could manage to remember where you DID leave her, it would
be more to the point than these negative assurances," said Lady
Beanford; "so far, all we know is that she is not at the
Carrywoods', or Ada Spelvexit's, or Westminster Abbey."
"That narrows the search down a bit," said Jane hopefully; "I rather
fancy she must have been with me when I went to Mornay's. I know I
went to Mornay's, because I remember meeting that delightful Malcolm
What's-his-name there--you know whom I mean. That's the great
advantage of people having unusual first names, you needn't try and
remember what their other name is. Of course I know one or two
other Malcolms, but none that could possibly be described as
delightful. He gave me two tickets for the Happy Sunday Evenings in
Sloane Square. I've probably left them at Mornay's, but still it
was awfully kind of him to give them to me."
"Do you think you left Louise there?"
"I might telephone and ask. Oh, Robert, before you clear the tea-
things away I wish you'd ring up Mornay's, in Regent Street, and ask
if I left two theatre tickets and one niece in their shop this
afternoon."
"A niece, ma'am?" asked the footman.
"Yes, Miss Louise didn't come home with me, and I'm not sure where I
left her."
"Miss Louise has been upstairs all the afternoon, ma'am, reading to
the second kitchenmaid, who has the neuralgia. I took up tea to
Miss Louise at a quarter to five o'clock, ma'am."
"Of course, how silly of me. I remember now, I asked her to read
the Faerie Queene to poor Emma, to try to send her to sleep. I
always get some one to read the Faerie Queene to me when I have
neuralgia, and it usually sends me to sleep. Louise doesn't seem to
have been successful, but one can't say she hasn't tried. I expect
after the first hour or so the kitchenmaid would rather have been
left alone with her neuralgia, but of course Louise wouldn't leave
off till some one told her to. Anyhow, you can ring up Mornay's,
Robert, and ask whether I left two theatre tickets there. Except
for your silk, Susan, those seem to be the only things I've
forgotten this afternoon. Quite wonderful for me."
_________
-THE END-
[H. H. Munro] Saki's short story: Louise
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