The Remoulding of Groby Lington

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　"A man is known by the company he keeps."In the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house Groby Lingtonfidgeted away the passing minutes with the demure restlessness ofadvanced middle age. About a quarter of an hour would have toelapse before it would be time to say his good-byes and make hisway across the village green to the station, with a selectedescort of nephews and nieces. He was a good-natured, kindlydispositioned man, and in theory he was delighted to payperiodical visits to the wife and children of his dead brotherWilliam; in practice, he infinitely preferred the comfort andseclusion of his own house and garden, and the companionship ofhis books and his parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresomeincursions into a family circle with which he had little incommon. It was not so much the spur of his own conscience thatdrove him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visithis relatives, as an obedient concession to the more insistent butvicarious conscience of his brother, Colonel John, who was apt toaccuse him of neglecting poor old William's family. Groby usuallyforgot or ignored the existence of his neighbour kinsfolk untilsuch time as he was threatened with a visit from the Colonel, whenhe would put matters straight by a hurried pilgrimage across thefew miles of intervening country to renew his acquaintance withthe young people and assume a kindly if rather forced interest inthe well-being of his sister-in-law. On this occasion he had cutmatters so fine between the timing of his exculpatory visit andthe coming of Colonel John, that he would scarcely be home beforethe latter was due to arrive. Anyhow, Groby had got it over, andsix or seven months might decently elapse before he need againsacrifice his comforts and inclinations on the altar of familysociability. He was inclined to be distinctly cheerful as hehopped about the room, picking up first one object, then another,and subjecting each to a brief bird-like scrutiny.Presently his cheerful listlessness changed sharply to an attitudeof vexed attention. In a scrap-book of drawings and caricaturesbelonging to one of his nephews he had come across an unkindlyclever sketch of himself and his parrot, solemnly confronting eachother in postures of ridiculous gravity and repose, and bearing alikeness to one another that the artist had done his utmost toaccentuate. After the first flush of annoyance had passed away,Groby laughed good-naturedly and admitted to himself thecleverness of the drawing. Then the feeling of resentmentrepossessed him, resentment not against the caricaturist who hadembodied the idea in pen and ink, but against the possible truththat the idea represented. Was it really the case that peoplegrew in time to resemble the animals they kept as pets, and had heunconsciously become more and more like the comically solemn birdthat was his constant companion? Groby was unusually silent as hewalked to the train with his escort of chattering nephews andnieces, and during the short railway journey his mind was more andmore possessed with an introspective conviction that he hadgradually settled down into a sort of parrot-like existence.What, after all, did his daily routine amount to but a sedatemeandering and pecking and perching, in his garden, among hisfruit trees, in his wicker chair on the lawn, or by the firesidein his library? And what was the sum total of his conversationwith chance-encountered neighbours? "Quite a spring day, isn'tit?" "It looks as though we should have some rain." "Glad to seeyou about again; you must take care of yourself." "How the youngfolk shoot up, don't they?" Strings of stupid, inevitableperfunctory remarks came to his mind, remarks that were certainlynot the mental exchange of human intelligences, but mere emptyparrot-talk. One might really just as well salute one'sacquaintances with "Pretty polly. Puss, puss, miaow!" Grobybegan to fume against the picture of himself as a foolishfeathered fowl which his nephew's sketch had first suggested, andwhich his own accusing imagination was filling in with suchunflattering detail."I'll give the beastly bird away," he said resentfully; though heknew at the same time that he would do no such thing. It wouldlook so absurd after all the years that he had kept the parrot andmade much of it suddenly to try and find it a new home."Has my brother arrived?" he asked of the stable-boy, who had comewith the pony-carriage to meet him."Yessir, came down by the two-fifteen. Your parrot's dead." Theboy made the latter announcement with the relish which his classfinds in proclaiming a catastrophe."My parrot dead?" said Groby. "What caused its death?""The ipe," said the boy briefly."The ipe?" queried Groby. "Whatever's that?""The ipe what the Colonel brought down with him," came the ratheralarming answer."Do you mean to say my brother is ill?" asked Groby. "Is itsomething infectious?""Th' Colonel's so well as ever he was," said the boy; and as nofurther explanation was forthcoming Groby had to possess himselfin mystified patience till he reached home. His brother waswaiting for him at the hall door."Have you heard about the parrot?" he asked at once. "'Pon mysoul I'm awfully sorry. The moment he saw the monkey I'd broughtdown as a surprise for you he squawked out 'Rats to you, sir!' andthe blessed monkey made one spring at him, got him by the neck andwhirled him round like a rattle. He was as dead as mutton by thetime I'd got him out of the little beggar's paws. Always beensuch a friendly little beast, the monkey has, should never havethought he'd got it in him to see red like that. Can't tell youhow sorry I feel about it, and now of course you'll hate the sightof the monkey.""Not at all," said Groby sincerely. A few hours earlier thetragic end which had befallen his parrot would have presenteditself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost as a politeattention on the part of the Fates."The bird was getting old, you know," he went on, in explanationof his obvious lack of decent regret at the loss of his pet. "Iwas really beginning to wonder if it was an unmixed kindness tolet him go on living till he succumbed to old age. What acharming little monkey!" he added, when he was introduced to theculprit.The new-comer was a small, long-tailed monkey from the WesternHemisphere, with a gentle, half-shy, half-trusting manner thatinstantly captured Groby's confidence; a student of simiancharacter might have seen in the fitful red light in its eyes someindication of the underlying temper which the parrot had so rashlyput to the test with such dramatic consequences for itself. Theservants, who had come to regard the defunct bird as a regularmember of the household, and one who gave really very littletrouble, were scandalized to find his bloodthirsty aggressorinstalled in his place as an honoured domestic pet."A nasty heathen ipe what don't never say nothing sensible andcheerful, same as pore Polly did," was the unfavourable verdict ofthe kitchen quarters.. . . . . . . . .One Sunday morning, some twelve or fourteen months after the visitof Colonel John and the parrot-tragedy, Miss Wepley sat decorouslyin her pew in the parish church, immediately in front of thatoccupied by Groby Lington. She was, comparatively speaking a new-comer in the neighbourhood, and was not personally acquainted withher fellow-worshipper in the seat behind, but for the past twoyears the Sunday morning service had brought them regularly withineach other's sphere of consciousness. Without having paidparticular attention to the subject, she could probably have givena correct rendering of the way in which he pronounced certainwords occurring in the responses, while he was well aware of thetrivial fact that, in addition to her prayer book andhandkerchief, a small paper packet of throat lozenges alwaysreposed on the seat beside her. Miss Wepley rarely had recourseto her lozenges, but in case she should be taken with a fit ofcoughing she wished to have the emergency duly provided for. Onthis particular Sunday the lozenges occasioned an unusualdiversion in the even tenor of her devotions, far more disturbingto her personally than a prolonged attack of coughing would havebeen. As she rose to take part in the singing of the first hymn,she fancied that she saw the hand of her neighbour, who was alonein the pew behind her, make a furtive downward grab at the packetlying on the seat; on turning sharply round she found that thepacket had certainly disappeared, but Mr. Lington was to alloutward seeming serenely intent on his hymnbook. No amount ofinterrogatory glaring on the part of the despoiled lady couldbring the least shade of conscious guilt to his face."Worse was to follow," as she remarked afterwards to a scandalizedaudience of friends and acquaintances. "I had scarcely knelt inprayer when a lozenge, one of my lozenges, came whizzing into thepew, just under my nose. I turned round and stared, but Mr.Lington had his eyes closed and his lips moving as though engagedin prayer. The moment I resumed my devotions another lozenge camerattling in, and then another. I took no notice for awhile, andthen turned round suddenly just as the dreadful man was about toflip another one at me. He hastily pretended to be turning overthe leaves of his book, but I was not to be taken in that time.He saw that he had been discovered and no more lozenges came. Ofcourse I have changed my pew.""No gentleman would have acted in such a disgraceful manner," saidone of her listeners; "and yet Mr. Lington used to be so respectedby everybody. He seems to have behaved like a little ill-bredschoolboy.""He behaved like a monkey," said Miss Wepley.Her unfavourable verdict was echoed in other quarters about thesame time. Groby Lington had never been a hero in the eyes of hispersonal retainers, but he had shared the approval accorded to hisdefunct parrot as a cheerful, well-dispositioned body, who gave noparticular trouble. Of late months, however, this character wouldhardly have been endorsed by the members of his domesticestablishment. The stolid stable-boy, who had first announced tohim the tragic end of his feathered pet, was one of the first togive voice to the murmurs of disapproval which became rampant andgeneral in the servants' quarters, and he had fairly substantialgrounds for his disaffection. In a burst of hot summer weather hehad obtained permission to bathe in a modest-sized pond in theorchard, and thither one afternoon Groby had bent his steps,attracted by loud imprecations of anger mingled with the shrillerchattering of monkey-language. He, beheld his plump diminutiveservitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, stormingineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of anapple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy'soutfit, which he had removed just out of has reach."The ipe's been an' took my clothes;" whined the boy, with thepassion of his kind for explaining the obvious. His incompletetoilet effect rather embarrassed him, but he hailed the arrival ofGroby with relief, as promising moral and material support in hisefforts to get back his raided garments. The monkey had ceasedits defiant jabbering, and doubtless with a little coaxing fromits master it would hand back the plunder."If I lift you up," suggested Groby, "you will just be able toreach the clothes."The boy agreed, and Groby clutched him firmly by the waistcoat,which was about all there was to catch hold of, and lifted, himclear of the ground. Then, with a deft swing he sent him crashinginto a clump of tall nettles, which closed receptively round him.The victim had not been brought up in a school which teaches oneto repress one's emotions--if a fox had attempted to gnaw at hisvitals he would have flown to complain to the nearest huntcommittee rather than have affected an attitude of stoicalindifference. On this occasion the volume of sound which heproduced under the stimulus of pain and rage and astonishment wasgenerous and sustained, but above his bellowings he coulddistinctly hear the triumphant chattering of his enemy in thetree, and a peal of shrill laughter from Groby.When the boy had finished an improvised St. Vitus caracole, whichwould have brought him fame on the boards of the Coliseum, andwhich indeed met with ready appreciation and applause from theretreating figure of Groby Lington, he found that the monkey hadalso discreetly retired, while his clothes were scattered on thegrass at the foot of the tree."They'm two ipes, that's what they be," he muttered angrily, andif his judgment was severe, at least he spoke under the sting ofconsiderable provocation.It was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave notice,having been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak of suddentemper on the part of the master anent some underdone cutlets."'E gnashed 'is teeth at me, 'e did reely," she informed asympathetic kitchen audience."I'd like to see 'im talk like that to me, I would," said the cookdefiantly, but her cooking from that moment showed a markedimprovement.It was seldom that Groby Lington so far detached himself from hisaccustomed habits as to go and form one of a house-party, and hewas not a little piqued that Mrs. Glenduff should have stowed himaway in the musty old Georgian wing of the house, in the nextroom, moreover, to Leonard Spabbink, the eminent pianist."He plays Liszt like an angel," had been the hostess'senthusiastic testimonial."He may play him like a trout for all I care," had been Groby'smental comment, "but I wouldn't mind betting that he snores. He'sjust the sort and shape that would. And if I hear him snoringthrough those ridiculous thin-panelled walls, there'll betrouble."He did, and there was.Groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and then madehis way through the corridor into Spabbink's room. Under Groby'svigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat upin bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has beentaught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, andthen the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper andslapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another momentSpabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by apillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'dlimbs were hauled out of bed and smacked, pinched, kicked, andbumped in a catch-as-catch-can progress across the floor, towardsthe flat shallow bath in whose utterly inadequate depths Grobyperseveringly strove to drown him. For a few moments the room wasalmost in darkness: Groby's candle had overturned in an earlystage of the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely reached to the spotwhere splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and splutterings, and achatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that was being wagedround the shores of the bath. A few instants later the one-sidedcombat was brightly lit up by the flare of blazing curtains andrapidly kindling panelling.When the hastily aroused members of the house-party stampeded outon to the lawn, the Georgian wing was well alight and belchingforth masses of smoke, but some moments elapsed before Grobyappeared with the half-drowned pianist in his arms, having justbethought him of the superior drowning facilities offered by thepond at the bottom of the lawn. The cool night air sobered hisrage, and when he found that he was innocently acclaimed as theheroic rescuer of poor Leonard Spabbink, and loudly commended forhis presence of mind in tying a wet cloth round his head toprotect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted the situation, andsubsequently gave a graphic account of his finding the musicianasleep with an overturned candle by his side and the conflagrationwell started. Spabbink gave HIS version some days later, when hehad partially recovered from the shock of his midnight castigationand immersion, but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive commentswith which his story was greeted warned him that the public earwas not at his disposal. He refused, however, to attend theceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society's life-savingmedal.It was about this time that Groby's pet monkey fell a victim tothe disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought underthe influence of a northern climate. Its master appeared to beprofoundly affected by its loss, and never quite recovered thelevel of spirits that he had recently attained. In company withthe tortoise, which Colonel John presented to him on his lastvisit, he potters about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none ofhis erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are fairlywell justified in alluding to him as "Old Uncle Groby."