Mrs. Packletide's Tiger

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　It was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she shouldshoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descendedon her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and morewholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wildbeast per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for hersudden deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact thatLoona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in anaeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; onlya personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Pressphotographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. Mrs.Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she wouldgive at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in LoonaBimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of theforeground and all of the conversation. She had also alreadydesigned in her mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going togive Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that issupposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs.Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives werelargely governed by dislike of Loona Bimberton.Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered athousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger withoutovermuch risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouringvillage could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animalof respectable antecedents, which had been driven by theincreasing infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confineits appetite to the smaller domestic animals. The prospect ofearning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting andcommercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted nightand day on the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tigerback in the unlikely event of his attempting to roam away to freshhunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left aboutwith elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his presentquarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old agebefore the date appointed for the memsahib's shoot. Motherscarrying their babies home through the jungle after the day's workin the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail therestful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platformhad been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placedtree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion,Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat,such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expectedto hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance.With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patiencecards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry."I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin.She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had amorbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had beenpaid for."Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide; "it's a very old tiger. Itcouldn't spring up here even if it wanted to.""If it's an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper. Athousand rupees is a lot of money."Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towardsmoney in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination.Her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble fromdissipating itself in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs andcentimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances whichwould have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Herspeculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants werecut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself. Assoon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on theearth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of allavailable cover than for the purpose of snatching a short restbefore commencing the grand attack."I believe it's ill," said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani,for the benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in aneighbouring tree."Hush!" said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tigercommenced ambling towards his victim."Now, now!" urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; "if he doesn'ttouch the goat we needn't pay for it." (The bait was an extra.)The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawnybeast sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness ofdeath. In a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on tothe scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news tothe village, where a thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus oftriumph. And their triumph and rejoicing found a ready echo inthe heart of Mrs. Packletide; already that luncheon-party inCurzon Street seemed immeasurably nearer.It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goatwas in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace ofthe rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidentlythe wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbedto heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle,accelerated by senile decay. Mrs. Packletide was pardonablyannoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessorof a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousandrupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot thebeast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore did Mrs.Packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her picturedfame reached from the pages of the TEXAS WEEKLY SNAPSHOT to theillustrated Monday supplement of the NOVOE VREMYA. As for LoonaBimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks,and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was amodel of repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined;there are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.From Curzon Street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the ManorHouse, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and itseemed a fitting and appropriate thing when Mrs. Packletide wentto the County Costume Ball in the character of Diana. She refusedto fall in, however, with Clovis's tempting suggestion of aprimeval dance party, at which every one should wear the skins ofbeasts they had recently slain. "I should be in rather a BabyBunting condition," confessed Clovis, "with a miserable rabbit-skin or two to wrap up in, but then," he added, with a rathermalicious glance at Diana's proportions, "my figure is quite asgood as that Russian dancing boy's.""How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened,"said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball."What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly."How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," saidMiss Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh."No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changingcolour as rapidly as though it were going through a book ofpatterns before post-time."Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's facesettled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white."You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked."I've seen a week-end cottage near Dorking that I should ratherlike to buy," said Miss Mebbin with seeming irrelevance. "Sixhundred and eighty, freehold. Quite a bargain, only I don'thappen to have the money.". . . . . . . . .Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her "LesFauves," and gay in summertime with its garden borders of tiger-lilies, is the wonder and admiration of her friends."It is a marvel how Louisa manages to do it," is the generalverdict.Mrs. Packletide indulges in no more big-game shooting."The incidental expenses are so heavy," she confides to inquiringfriends.