In a first-class carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the
flat, green Hungarian plain two Britons sat in friendly, fitful
converse. They had first foregathered in the cold grey dawn at the
frontier line, where the presiding eagle takes on an extra head and
Teuton lands pass from Hohenzollern to Habsburg keeping--and where a
probing official beak requires to delve in polite and perhaps
perfunctory, but always tiresome, manner into the baggage of sleep-
hungry passengers. After a day's break of their journey at Vienna
the travellers had again foregathered at the trainside and paid one
another the compliment of settling instinctively into the same
carriage. The elder of the two had the appearance and manner of a
diplomat; in point of fact he was the well-connected foster-brother
of a wine business. The other was certainly a journalist. Neither
man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not being
talkative. That is why from time to time they talked.
One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front
of all others. In Vienna the previous day they had learned of the
mysterious vanishing of a world-famous picture from the walls of the
Louvre.
"A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of
imitations," said the Journalist.
"It has had a lot of anticipations, for the matter of that," said
the Wine-brother.
"Oh, of course there have been thefts from the Louvre before."
"I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than
pictures. In particular I was thinking of the case of my aunt,
Crispina Umberleigh."
"I remember hearing something of the affair," said the Journalist,
"but I was away from England at the time. I never quite knew what
was supposed to have happened."
"You may hear what really happened if you will respect it as a
confidence," said the Wine Merchant. "In the first place I may say
that the disappearance of Mrs. Umberleigh was not regarded by the
family entirely as a bereavement. My uncle, Edward Umberleigh, was
not by any means a weak-kneed individual, in fact in the world of
politics he had to be reckoned with more or less as a strong man,
but he was unmistakably dominated by Crispina; indeed I never met
any human being who was not frozen into subjection when brought into
prolonged contact with her. Some people are born to command;
Crispina Mrs. Umberleigh was born to legislate, codify,
administrate, censor, license, ban, execute, and sit in judgement
generally. If she was not born with that destiny she adopted it at
an early age. From the kitchen regions upwards every one in the
household came under her despotic sway and stayed there with the
submissiveness of molluscs involved in a glacial epoch. As a nephew
on a footing of only occasional visits she affected me merely as an
epidemic, disagreeable while it lasted, but without any permanent
effect; but her own sons and daughters stood in mortal awe of her;
their studies, friendships, diet, amusements, religious observances,
and way of doing their hair were all regulated and ordained
according to the august lady's will and pleasure. This will help
you to understand the sensation of stupefaction which was caused in
the family when she unobtrusively and inexplicably vanished. It was
as though St. Paul's Cathedral or the Piccadilly Hotel had
disappeared in the night, leaving nothing but an open space to mark
where it had stood. As far as was known nothing was troubling her;
in fact there was much before her to make life particularly well
worth living. The youngest boy had come back from school with an
unsatisfactory report, and she was to have sat in judgement on him
the very afternoon of the day she disappeared--if it had been he who
had vanished in a hurry one could have supplied the motive. Then
she was in the middle of a newspaper correspondence with a rural
dean in which she had already proved him guilty of heresy,
inconsistency, and unworthy quibbling, and no ordinary consideration
would have induced her to discontinue the controversy. Of course
the matter was put in the hands of the police, but as far as
possible it was kept out of the papers, and the generally accepted
explanation of her withdrawal from her social circle was that she
had gone into a nursing home."
"And what was the immediate effect on the home circle?" asked the
Journalist.
"All the girls bought themselves bicycles; the feminine cycling
craze was still in existence, and Crispina had rigidly vetoed any
participation in it among the members of her household. The
youngest boy let himself go to such an extent during his next term
that it had to be his last as far as that particular establishment
was concerned. The elder boys propounded a theory that their mother
might be wandering somewhere abroad, and searched for her
assiduously, chiefly, it must be admitted, in a class of Montmartre
resort where it was extremely improbable that she would be found."
"And all this while couldn't your uncle get hold of the least clue?"
"As a matter of fact he had received some information, though of
course I did not know of it at the time. He got a message one day
telling him that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the
country; she was said to be hidden away, in one of the islands off
the coast of Norway I think it was, in comfortable surroundings and
well cared for. And with the information came a demand for money; a
lump sum of 2000 pounds was to be paid yearly. Failing this she
would be immediately restored to her family."
The Journalist was silent for a moment, and them began to laugh
quietly.
"It was certainly an inverted form of holding to ransom," he said.
"If you had known my aunt," said the Wine Merchant, "you would have
wondered that they didn't put the figure higher."
"I realise the temptation. Did your uncle succumb to it?"
"Well, you see, he had to think of others as well as himself. For
the family to have gone back into the Crispina thraldom after having
tasted the delights of liberty would have been a tragedy, and there
were even wider considerations to be taken into account. Since his
bereavement he had unconsciously taken up a far bolder and more
initiatory line in public affairs, and his popularity and influence
had increased correspondingly. From being merely a strong man in
the political world he began to be spoken of as the strong man. All
this he knew would be jeopardised if he once more dropped into the
social position of the husband of Mrs. Umberleigh. He was a rich
man, and the 2000 pounds a year, though not exactly a fleabite, did
not seem an extravagant price to pay for the boarding-out of
Crispina. Of course, he had severe qualms of conscience about the
arrangement. Later on, when he took me into his confidence, he told
me that in paying the ransom, or hush-money as I should have called
it, he was partly influenced by the fear that if he refused it the
kidnappers might have vented their rage and disappointment on their
captive. It was better, he said, to think of her being well cared
for as a highly-valued paying-guest in one of the Lofoden Islands
than to have her struggling miserably home in a maimed and mutilated
condition. Anyway he paid the yearly instalment as punctually as
one pays a fire insurance, and with equal promptitude there would
come an acknowledgment of the money and a brief statement to the
effect that Crispina was in good health and fairly cheerful spirits.
One report even mentioned that she was busying herself with a scheme
for proposed reforms in Church management to be pressed on the local
pastorate. Another spoke of a rheumatic attack and a journey to a
'cure' on the mainland, and on that occasion an additional eighty
pounds was demanded and conceded. Of course it was to the interest
of the kidnappers to keep their charge in good health, but the
secrecy with which they managed to shroud their arrangements argued
a really wonderful organisation. If my uncle was paying a rather
high price, at least he could console himself with the reflection
that he was paying specialists' fees."
"Meanwhile had the police given up all attempts to track the missing
lady?" asked the Journalist.
"Not entirely; they came to my uncle from time to time to report on
clues which they thought might yield some elucidation as to her fate
or whereabouts, but I think they had their suspicions that he was
possessed of more information than he had put at their disposal.
And then, after a disappearance of more than eight years, Crispina
returned with dramatic suddenness to the home she had left so
mysteriously."
"She had given her captors the slip?"
"She had never been captured. Her wandering away had been caused by
a sudden and complete loss of memory. She usually dressed rather in
the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very
surprising that she should have imagined that she was one; and still
less that people should accept her statement and help her to get
work. She had wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found
fairly steady employment there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting
people's rooms in order counterbalancing her obstinate and
domineering characteristics. It was the shock of being
patronisingly addressed as 'my good woman' by a curate, who was
disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a parish
concert hall that led to the sudden restoration of her memory. 'I
think you forget who you are speaking to,' she observed crushingly,
which was rather unduly severe, considering she had only just
remembered it herself."
"But," exclaimed the Journalist, "the Lofoden Island people! Who
had they got hold of?"
"A purely mythical prisoner. It was an attempt in the first place
by some one who knew something of the domestic situation, probably a
discharged valet, to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberleigh
before the missing woman turned up; the subsequent yearly
instalments were an unlooked-for increment to the original haul.
"Crispina found that the eight years' interregnum had materially
weakened her ascendancy over her now grown-up offspring. Her
husband, however, never accomplished anything great in the political
world after her return; the strain of trying to account
satisfactorily for an unspecified expenditure of sixteen thousand
pounds spread over eight years sufficiently occupied his mental
energies. Here is Belgrad and another custom house."
_________
-THE END-
[H. H. Munro] Saki's short story: The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh
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