The Pennance

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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Octavian Ruttle was one of those lively cheerful individuals on whomamiability had set its unmistakable stamp, and, like most of his kind,his soul's peace depended in large measure on the unstinted approval ofhis fellows. In hunting to death a small tabby cat he had done a thingof which he scarcely approved himself, and he was glad when the gardenerhad hidden the body in its hastily dug grave under a lone oak-tree in themeadow, the same tree that the hunted quarry had climbed as a last efforttowards safety. It had been a distasteful and seemingly ruthless deed,but circumstances had demanded the doing of it. Octavian kept chickens;at least he kept some of them; others vanished from his keeping, leavingonly a few bloodstained feathers to mark the manner of their going. Thetabby cat from the large grey house that stood with its back to themeadow had been detected in many furtive visits to the hen-coups, andafter due negotiation with those in authority at the grey house asentence of death had been agreed on. "The children will mind, but theyneed not know," had been the last word on the matter. The children in question were a standing puzzle to Octavian; in thecourse of a few months he considered that he should have known theirnames, ages, the dates of their birthdays, and have been introduced totheir favourite toys. They remained however, as non-committal as thelong blank wall that shut them off from the meadow, a wall over whichtheir three heads sometimes appeared at odd moments. They had parents inIndia--that much Octavian had learned in the neighbourhood; the children,beyond grouping themselves garment-wise into sexes, a girl and two boys,carried their life-story no further on his behoof. And now it seemed hewas engaged in something which touched them closely, but must be hiddenfrom their knowledge. The poor helpless chickens had gone one by one to their doom, so it wasmeet that their destroyer should come to a violent end; yet Octavian feltsome qualms when his share of the violence was ended. The little cat,headed off from its wonted tracks of safety, had raced unfriended fromshelter to shelter, and its end had been rather piteous. Octavian walkedthrough the long grass of the meadow with a step less jaunty than usual.And as he passed beneath the shadow of the high blank wall he glanced upand became aware that his hunting had had undesired witnesses. Threewhite set faces were looking down at him, and if ever an artist wanted athreefold study of cold human hate, impotent yet unyielding, raging yetmasked in stillness, he would have found it in the triple gaze that metOctavian's eye. "I'm sorry, but it had to be done," said Octavian, with genuine apologyin his voice. "Beast!" The answer came from three throats with startling intensity. Octavian felt that the blank wall would not be more impervious to hisexplanations than the bunch of human hostility that peered over itscoping; he wisely decided to withhold his peace overtures till a morehopeful occasion. Two days later he ransacked the best sweet shop in the neighbouringmarket town for a box of chocolates that by its size and contents shouldfitly atone for the dismal deed done under the oak tree in the meadow.The two first specimens that were shown him he hastily rejected; one hada group of chickens pictured on its lid, the other bore the portrait of atabby kitten. A third sample was more simply bedecked with a spray ofpainted poppies, and Octavian hailed the flowers of forgetfulness as ahappy omen. He felt distinctly more at ease with his surroundings whenthe imposing package had been sent across to the grey house, and amessage returned to say that it had been duly given to the children. Thenext morning he sauntered with purposeful steps past the long blank wallon his way to the chicken-run and piggery that stood at the bottom of themeadow. The three children were perched at their accustomed look-out,and their range of sight did not seem to concern itself with Octavian'spresence. As he became depressingly aware of the aloofness of their gazehe also noted a strange variegation in the herbage at his feet; thegreensward for a considerable space around was strewn and speckled with achocolate-coloured hail, enlivened here and there with gay tinsel-likewrappings or the glistening mauve of crystallised violets. It was asthough the fairy paradise of a greedyminded child had taken shape andsubstance in the vegetation of the meadow. Octavian's bloodmoney hadbeen flung back at him in scorn. To increase his discomfiture the march of events tended to shift theblame of ravaged chicken-coops from the supposed culprit who had alreadypaid full forfeit; the young chicks were still carried off, and it seemedhighly probable that the cat had only haunted the chicken-run to prey onthe rats which harboured there. Through the flowing channels of servanttalk the children learned of this belated revision of verdict, andOctavian one day picked up a sheet of copy-book paper on which waspainstakingly written: "Beast. Rats eated your chickens." More ardentlythan ever did he wish for an opportunity for sloughing off the disgracethat enwrapped him, and earning some happier nickname from his threeunsparing judges. And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-olddaughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till oneo'clock with her father while the nursemaid gobbled and digested herdinner and novelette. About the same time the blank wall was usuallyenlivened by the presence of its three small wardens. Octavian, withseeming carelessness of purpose, brought Olivia well within hail of thewatchers and noted with hidden delight the growing interest that dawnedin that hitherto sternly hostile quarter. His little Olivia, with hersleepy placid ways, was going to succeed where he, with his anxious well-meant overtures, had so signally failed. He brought her a large yellowdahlia, which she grasped tightly in one hand and regarded with a stareof benevolent boredom, such as one might bestow on amateur classicaldancing performed in aid of a deserving charity. Then he turned shyly tothe group perched on the wall and asked with affected carelessness, "Doyou like flowers?" Three solemn nods rewarded his venture. "Which sorts do you like best?" he asked, this time with a distinctbetrayal of eagerness in his voice. "Those with all the colours, over there." Three chubby arms pointed to adistant tangle of sweet-pea. Child-like, they had asked for what layfarthest from hand, but Octavian trotted off gleefully to obey theirwelcome behest. He pulled and plucked with unsparing hand, and broughtevery variety of tint that he could see into his bunch that was rapidlybecoming a bundle. Then he turned to retrace his steps, and found theblank wall blanker and more deserted than ever, while the foreground wasvoid of all trace of Olivia. Far down the meadow three children werepushing a go-cart at the utmost speed they could muster in the directionof the piggeries; it was Olivia's go-cart and Olivia sat in it, somewhatbumped and shaken by the pace at which she was being driven, butapparently retaining her wonted composure of mind. Octavian stared for amoment at the rapidly moving group, and then started in hot pursuit,shedding as he ran sprays of blossom from the mass of sweet-pea that hestill clutched in his hands. Fast as he ran the children had reached thepiggery before he could overtake them, and he arrived just in time to seeOlivia, wondering but unprotesting, hauled and pushed up to the roof ofthe nearest sty. They were old buildings in some need of repair, and therickety roof would certainly not have borne Octavian's weight if he hadattempted to follow his daughter and her captors on their new vantageground. "What are you going to do with her?" he panted. There was no mistakingthe grim trend of mischief in those flushed by sternly composed youngfaces. "Hang her in chains over a slow fire," said one of the boys. Evidentlythey had been reading English history. "Frow her down the pigs will d'vour her, every bit 'cept the palms of herhands," said the other boy. It was also evident that they had studiedBiblical history. The last proposal was the one which most alarmed Octavian, since it mightbe carried into effect at a moment's notice; there had been cases, heremembered, of pigs eating babies. "You surely wouldn't treat my poor little Olivia in that way?" hepleaded. "You killed our little cat," came in stern reminder from three throats. "I'm sorry I did," said Octavian, and if there is a standard measurementin truths Octavian's statement was assuredly a large nine. "We shall be very sorry when we've killed Olivia," said the girl, "but wecan't be sorry till we've done it." The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart beforeOctavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line ofappeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia hadslid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morassof muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigstywall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfedhis feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden dropthrough the air, had been mildly pleased at finding herself in close andunstinted contact with the sticky element that oozed around her, but asshe began to sink gently into the bed of slime a feeling dawned on herthat she was not after all very happy, and she began to cry in thetentative fashion of the normally good child. Octavian, battling withthe quagmire, which seemed to have learned the rare art of giving way atall points without yielding an inch, saw his daughter slowly disappearingin the engulfing slush, her smeared face further distorted with thecontortions of whimpering wonder, while from their perch on the pigstyroof the three children looked down with the cold unpitying detachment ofthe Parcae Sisters. "I can't reach her in time," gasped Octavian, "she'll be choked in themuck. Won't you help her?" "No one helped our cat," came the inevitable reminder. "I'll do anything to show you how sorry I am about that," cried Octavian,with a further desperate flounder, which carried him scarcely two inchesforward. "Will you stand in a white sheet by the grave?" "Yes," screamed Octavian. "Holding a candle?" "An' saying 'I'm a miserable Beast'?" Octavian agreed to both suggestions. "For a long, long time?" "For half an hour," said Octavian. There was an anxious ring in hisvoice as he named the time-limit; was there not the precedent of a Germanking who did open-air penance for several days and nights at Christmas-time clad only in his shirt? Fortunately the children did not appear tohave read German history, and half an hour seemed long and goodly intheir eyes. "All right," came with threefold solemnity from the roof, and a momentlater a short ladder had been laboriously pushed across to Octavian, wholost no time in propping it against the low pigsty wall. Scramblinggingerly along its rungs he was able to lean across the morass thatseparated him from his slowly foundering offspring and extract her likean unwilling cork from it's slushy embrace. A few minutes later he waslistening to the shrill and repeated assurances of the nursemaid that herprevious experience of filthy spectacles had been on a notably smallerscale. That same evening when twilight was deepening into darkness Octavian tookup his position as penitent under the lone oak-tree, having firstcarefully undressed the part. Clad in a zephyr shirt, which on thisoccasion thoroughly merited its name, he held in one hand a lightedcandle and in the other a watch, into which the soul of a dead plumberseemed to have passed. A box of matches lay at his feet and was resortedto on the fairly frequent occasions when the candle succumbed to thenight breezes. The house loomed inscrutable in the middle distance, butas Octavian conscientiously repeated the formula of his penance he feltcertain that three pairs of solemn eyes were watching his moth-sharedvigil. And the next morning his eyes were gladdened by a sheet of copy-bookpaper lying beside the blank wall, on which was written the message "Un-Beast."

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