[adapted]

by
Saki

CONRADIN was ten years old, and the doctor had given his professional opinion that the boy would not live for another five years. The doctor was soft and weak, and mattered little, but his opinion was supported by Mrs. de Ropp, who mattered for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin’s cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she stood for those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and unpleasant and real; the other two-fifths, always against the first part, were made up of himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would give in to the strong pressure of tiring necessary things—such as illnesses and overprotective rules and long, boring dulness. Without his imagination, which grew wild because of loneliness, he would have given in long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, even in her most honest moments, admit to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have known a little that stopping him “for his good” was a duty that she did not find very annoying. Conradin hated her very truly and strongly, which he could hide perfectly. The few pleasures he could make for himself became even more enjoyable because they would probably annoy his guardian, and from the world of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should not be allowed in.

In the boring, sad garden, watched by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that it was time for medicines, he did not like it much. The few fruit trees in it were kept carefully away from his picking, as if they were rare examples of their kind growing in a dry wasteland; it would probably have been hard to find a market gardener who would have offered ten shillings for all their fruit in the whole year.

In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind some dark bushes, was an unused tool shed, quite big, and inside it Conradin found a safe place, something that seemed at different times like a playroom and a church. He had filled it with a crowd of familiar ghosts, imagined some from pieces of history and some from his own mind, but it also had two real living creatures.

In one corner lived a Houdan hen with ragged feathers, on which the boy gave a lot of love that had hardly any other place to go. Further back in the dark stood a large hutch, divided into two sections, one of which had close iron bars in front. This was the home of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher’s boy had once secretly brought, cage and all, into its present place, in exchange for a long-hidden store of small silver coins.

Conradin was very afraid of the thin, quick-moving beast with sharp teeth, but it was his most loved thing. Its very presence in the tool shed was a secret and scary joy, to be kept very carefully from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately called his cousin. And one day, out of who knows what stuff, he gave the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it became a god and a religion.

The Woman went to a church near by once a week, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was a strange ceremony in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dark and dusty silence of the tool-shed, he prayed with mysterious and careful ceremony before the wooden hutch where lived Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret.

Red flowers in their season and bright red berries in the winter time were offered at his holy place, for he was a god who cared most about the wild and impatient side of things, not like the Woman’s religion, which, as far as Conradin could see, went very far the other way. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was scattered in front of his cage, an important part of the offering was that the nutmeg had to be stolen.

These festivals did not happen regularly, and were mainly held to celebrate some event that soon passed. One time, when Mrs. de Ropp had a bad toothache for three days, Conradin kept the festival going for the whole three days, and he almost managed to make himself believe that Sredni Vashtar was the one who caused the toothache. If the sickness had lasted for another day, the nutmeg would have run out.

The Houdan hen was never brought into the religion of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago decided that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to know at all what an Anabaptist was, but he secretly hoped that it was bold and not very proper. Mrs. de Ropp was the model on which he based and hated all properness.

After a while Conradin’s deep interest in the tool-shed began to get the attention of his guardian. “It is not good for him to be messing about down there in all kinds of weather,” she quickly decided, and at breakfast one morning she said that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her bad eyesight she looked closely at Conradin, waiting for a burst of anger and sadness, which she was ready to scold with many fine rules and reasons. But Conradin said nothing; there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his pale, stiff face gave her a brief worry, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a treat which she usually banned because it was bad for him; also because making it “caused trouble,” a serious offence in the eyes of middle-class women.

“I thought you liked toast,” she said, with a hurt look, when she saw that he did not touch it.

“Sometimes,” said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was a change in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin used to sing his praises, to-night he asked for a favor.

“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

The thing was not explained. Because Sredni Vashtar was a god, he must know. And trying not to cry as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he hated so much.

And every night, in the nice darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dim light of the tool-shed, Conradin’s sad prayer went up: “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

Mrs. de Ropp saw that the visits to the shed did not stop, and one day she took another trip to look around.

“What are you keeping in that locked cage?” she asked. “I think it’s guinea-pigs. I’ll have them all taken away.”

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman searched his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and at once went down to the shed to finish her search. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been told to stay in the house. From the farthest window of the dining room the door of the shed could just be seen past the corner of the bushes, and there Conradin stood. He saw the Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of the special hutch and looking down with her weak eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would poke at the straw in her clumsy hurry.

And Conradin deeply breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out soon with that tight smile he hated so much on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, not a god anymore, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would always win as she did now, and that he would grow more and more sick under her bothering and bossy ways and her idea that she knew better, till one day nothing would matter much to him anymore, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the pain and sadness of his loss, he began to sing loudly and without fear the song of his idol in danger:—

Sredni Vashtar went out,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies asked for peace but he gave them death,
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then suddenly he stopped his singing and moved closer to the window glass. The door of the shed was still a little open as it had been left, and the minutes were passing. They were long minutes, but they passed anyway. He watched the starlings running and flying in small groups across the grass; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A maid with an unhappy face came in to set the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched.

Hope had slowly crept into his heart, and now a look of victory began to shine in his eyes that had only known the sad patience of defeat. Quietly, with a secret joy, he began once again the song of victory and ruin. And soon his eyes were rewarded; out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown animal, with eyes blinking at the fading daylight, and dark wet marks around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret went down to a small stream at the end of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little wooden bridge and disappeared in the bushes. That was how Sredni Vashtar went away.

“Tea is ready,” said the angry-looking maid; “where is the lady of the house?”

“She went down to the shed a while ago,” said Conradin.

And while the maid went to call her mistress to tea Conradin took a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and started to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which came in quick bursts beyond the dining-room door. The loud silly screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of surprised cries from the kitchen area, the quick footsteps and hurried trips for outside help, and then after a pause, the frightened sobbing and the shuffling steps of those who carried a heavy load into the house.

“Who will tell the poor child? I just couldn’t!” said a high voice. And while they discussed it among themselves Conradin made himself another piece of toast.