The Chronicles of Clovis

The Chronicles of Clovis

Saki

"All hunting stories are the same," said Clovis; "just as all Turf

stories are the same, and all--"

"My hunting story isn't a bit like any you've ever heard," said the

Baroness. "It happened quite a while ago, when I was about

twenty-three. I wasn't living apart from my husband then; you see,

neither of us could afford to make the other a separate allowance. In

spite of everything that proverbs may say, poverty keeps together more

homes than it breaks up. But we always hunted with different packs.

All this has nothing to do with the story."

"We haven't arrived at the meet yet. I suppose there was a meet," said

Clovis.

"Of course there was a meet," said the Baroness; all the usual crowd

were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those

strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas

decorations in church. 'I feel a presentiment that something dreadful

is going to happen,' she said to me; 'am I looking pale?'

"She was looking about as pale as a beetroot that has suddenly heard

bad news.

"'You're looking nicer than usual,' I said, 'but that's so easy for

you.' Before she had got the right bearings of this remark we had

settled down to business; hounds had found a fox lying out in some

gorse-bushes."

"I knew it," said Clovis, "in every fox-hunting story that I've ever

heard there's been a fox and some gorse-bushes."

"Constance and I were well mounted," continued the Baroness serenely,

"and we had no difficulty in keeping ourselves in the first flight,

though it was a fairly stiff run. Towards the finish, however, we must

have held rather too independent a line, for we lost the hounds, and

found ourselves plodding aimlessly along miles away from anywhere. It

was fairly exasperating, and my temper was beginning to let itself go

by inches, when on pushing our way through an accommodating hedge we

were gladdened by the sight of hounds in full cry in a hollow just

beneath us.

"'There they go,' cried Constance, and then added in a gasp, 'In

Heaven's name, what are they hunting?'

"It was certainly no mortal fox. It stood more than twice as high, had

a short, ugly head, and an enormous thick neck.

"'It's a hyaena,' I cried; 'it must have escaped from Lord Pabham's

Park.'

"At that moment the hunted beast turned and faced its pursuers, and the

hounds (there were only about six couple of them) stood round in a

half-circle and looked foolish. Evidently they had broken away from

the rest of the pack on the trail of this alien scent, and were not

quite sure how to treat their quarry now they had got him.

"The hyaena hailed our approach with unmistakable relief and

demonstrations of friendliness. It had probably been accustomed to

uniform kindness from humans, while its first experience of a pack of

hounds had left a bad impression. The hounds looked more than ever

embarrassed as their quarry paraded its sudden intimacy with us, and

the faint toot of a horn in the distance was seized on as a welcome

signal for unobtrusive departure. Constance and I and the hyaena were

left alone in the gathering twilight.

"'What are we to do?' asked Constance.

"'What a person you are for questions,' I said.

"'Well, we can't stay here all night with a hyaena,' she retorted.

"'I don't know what your ideas of comfort are,' I said; 'but I

shouldn't think of staying here all night even without a hyaena. My

home may be an unhappy one, but at least it has hot and cold water laid

on, and domestic service, and other conveniences which we shouldn't

find here. We had better make for that ridge of trees to the right; I

imagine the Crowley road is just beyond.'

"We trotted off slowly along a faintly marked cart-track, with the

The grill-room clock struck eleven with the respectful unobtrusiveness

of one whose mission in life is to be ignored. When the flight of time

should really have rendered abstinence and migration imperative the

lighting apparatus would signal the fact in the usual way.

Six minutes later Clovis approached the supper-table, in the blessed

expectancy of one who has dined sketchily and long ago.

"I'm starving," he announced, making an effort to sit down gracefully

and read the menu at the same time.

"So I gathered;" said his host, "from the fact that you were nearly

punctual. I ought to have told you that I'm a Food Reformer. I've

ordered two bowls of bread-and-milk and some health biscuits. I hope

you don't mind."

Clovis pretended afterwards that he didn't go white above the

collar-line for the fraction of a second.

"All the same," he said, "you ought not to joke about such things.

There really are such people. I've known people who've met them. To

think of all the adorable things there are to eat in the world, and

then to go through life munching sawdust and being proud of it."

"They're like the Flagellants of the Middle Ages, who went about

mortifying themselves."

"They had some excuse," said Clovis. "They did it to save their

immortal souls, didn't they? You needn't tell me that a man who

doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a

stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly

developed."

Clovis relapsed for a few golden moments into tender intimacies with a

succession of rapidly disappearing oysters.

"I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," he resumed

presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify

it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they

arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the

spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that

quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. Do you like

my new waistcoat? I'm wearing it for the first time to-night."

"It looks like a great many others you've had lately, only worse. New

dinner waistcoats are becoming a habit with you."

"They say one always pays for the excesses of one's youth; mercifully

that isn't true about one's clothes. My mother is thinking of getting

married."

"Again!"

"It's the first time."

"Of course, you ought to know. I was under the impression that she'd

been married once or twice at least."

"Three times, to be mathematically exact. I meant that it was the

first time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did

it without thinking. As a matter of fact, it's really I who am doing

the thinking for her in this case. You see, it's quite two years since

her last husband died."

"You evidently think that brevity is the soul of widowhood."

"Well, it struck me that she was getting moped, and beginning to settle

down, which wouldn't suit her a bit. The first symptom that I noticed

was when she began to complain that we were living beyond our income.

All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who

aren't respectable live beyond other peoples. A few gifted individuals

manage to do both."

"It's hardly so much a gift as an industry."

"The crisis came," returned Clovis, "when she suddenly started the

theory that late hours were bad for one, and wanted me to be in by one

o'clock every night. Imagine that sort of thing for me, who was

eighteen on my last birthday."

"On your last two birthdays, to be mathematically exact."

"Oh, well, that's not my fault. I'm not going to arrive at nineteen as

long as my mother remains at thirty-seven. One must have some regard

for appearances."

"Perhaps your mother would age a little in the process of settling