Laura

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to find out
how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Peter Eastman, July third, two thousand six. Laura by Saki.

(00:25):
You are not really dying, are you, asked Amanda. I
have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday, said Laura.
But to day is Saturday. This is serious, gasped Amanda.
I don't know about it being serious. It is certainly Saturday,

(00:47):
said Laura. Death is always serious, said Amanda. I never
said I was going to die. I am presumably going
to leave off being Laura, but I shall go on
being something, an animal of some kind. I suppose you see,
when one hasn't been very good in the life, one

(01:08):
has just lived, one reincarnates in some lower organism. And
I haven't been very good when one comes to think
of it. I've been petty and mean and vindictive and
all that sort of thing when circumstances have seemed to
warrant it. Circumstances never warrant that sort of thing, said

(01:29):
Amanda hastily. If you don't mind by saying so, observed Laura,
Agbert is a circumstance that would warrant any amount of
that sort of thing. You are married to him, that's different.
You've sworn to love, honor and adjure him. I haven't.
I don't see what's wrong with Egbert, protested Amanda. Oh,

(01:53):
I dare say the wrongness has been on my part,
admitted Laura, dispassionately. He has merely been the extenuating circumstance.
He made a thin, peevish kind of fuss. For instance,
when I took the collie puppies from the farm out
for a run the other day, they chased his young
broods of speckled Sussex and drove two sitting hens off

(02:15):
their nests, besides running all over the flower beds. You
know how devoted he is to his poultry and garden. Anyhow,
he needn't have gone on about it for the entire
evening and then have said, let's say no more about it.
Just when I was beginning to enjoy the discussion. That's
where one of my petty, vindictive revenges came in, added Laura,

(02:38):
with an unrepented chuckle. I turned the entire family of
speckled Sussex into his seedling shed the day after the
puppy episode. How could you, exclaimed Amanda. It came quite easy,
said Laura. Two of the hens pretended to be laying
at the time, but I was firm and we thought

(03:01):
it was an accident, you see, resumed Laura. I really
have some grounds for supposing that my next incarnation will
be in a lower organism. I shall be an animal
of some kind. On the other hand, I haven't been
a bad sort in my way, so I think I
may count on being a nice animal, something elegant and

(03:23):
lively with a love of fun. An otter. Perhaps I
can't imagine you as an otter, said Amanda. Well, I
don't suppose you can imagine me as an angel if
it comes to that, said Laura. Amanda was silent. She couldn't. Personally.

(03:46):
I think an otter life would be rather enjoyable, continued Laura.
Salmon to eat all the year round, and the satisfaction
of being able to fetch the trout in their own
homes without having to wait for hours, to the consent
to rise to the fly you've been dangling before them,
and an elegance svelt figure. Think of the otter hounds,

(04:09):
interposed Amanda. How dreadful to be hunted and harried and
finally worried to death? Rather fun with half the neighborhood
looking on, and anyhow not worse than this Saturday to
Tuesday business of dying by inches. And then I should
go on into something else. If I had been a

(04:30):
moderately good order, I suppose I should get back into
human shape of some sort, probably something rather primitive, A
little brown, unclothed nubian boy. I should think. I wish
you would be serious, sighed Amanda. You really ought to
be if you're only going to live till Tuesday. As

(04:51):
a matter of fact, Laura died on Monday, so dreadfully upsetting,
Amanda complained to her uncle in law, Sir Lolworth. Quayne,
I've asked quite a lot of people down for golf
and fishing, and the rhododendrons are just looking their best.
Laura always was inconsiderate, said Sir Lolworth. She was born

(05:17):
during Goodwood Week with an ambassador staying in the house
who hated babies. She had the maddest kind of ideas,
said Amanda. Do you know if there was any insanity
in her family insanity. No, I never heard of any.
Her father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he's

(05:38):
saying on all other subjects. She had an idea that
she was going to be reincarnated as an otter, said Amanda.
One meets with those ideas of reincarnation so frequently, even
in the West, said Sir Lolworth. That one can hardly
set them down as being mad. And Laura was such

(06:01):
an unaccountable person in this life that I should not
like to lay down definite rules as to what she
might be doing in an after state. You think she
really might have passed into some animal form, asked Amanda.
She was one of those who shaped their opinions rather
readily from the standpoint of those around them. Just then,

(06:27):
Egbert entered the breakfast room, wearing an air of bereavement.
That Laura's demise would have been insufficient in itself to
account for four of my speckled Sussex have been killed,
he exclaimed, the very four that were to go to
the show on Friday. One of them was dragged away

(06:47):
and eaten right in the middle of that new carnation bed.
That I've been to such trouble and expense over my
best flower bed and my best fowl singled out for destruction.
It almost seemed as if the brute that did the
deed had special knowledge how to be as devastating as
possible in a short space of time. Was it a fox,

(07:09):
do you think, asked Amanda. Sounds more like a pole cat,
said Sir Lolworth. No, said Egbert. There were marks of
webbed feet all over the place, and we followed the
tracks down to the stream at the bottom of the garden.
Evidently an otter. Amanda looked quickly and furtively across at

(07:32):
Sir Lolworth. Egbert was too agitated to eat any breakfast,
and went out to superintend the strengthening of the poultry
yard defenses. I think she might at least have waited
til the funeral is over, said Amanda in a scandalized voice.
It's her own funeral, you know, said Sir Lolworth. It's

(07:55):
a nice point in etiquette, how far one ought to
show respect to one's own mortal remains. Disregard for mortuary
convention was carried to further lengths. Next day, during the
absence of the family at the funeral ceremony, the remaining
survivors of the speckled Sussex were massacred. The marauder's line

(08:18):
of retreat seemed to have embraced most of the flower
beds on the lawn, but the strawberry beds in the
lower garden had also suffered. I shall get the otter
hounds to come here at the earliest possible moment, said
Agbert savagely. On no account. You can't dream of such

(08:38):
a thing, exclaimed Amanda. I mean it wouldn't do so
soon after a funeral in the house. It's a case
of necessity, said Agbert. Whence an otter takes to that
sort of thing, it won't stop. Perhaps it will go elsewhere.
Now there are no more fowls left, suggested Amanda. One

(09:01):
would think you wanted to shield the beast, said Egbert.
There's been so little water in the stream lately, objected Amanda.
It seems hardly sporting to hunt an animal when it
has so little chance of taking refuge anywhere. Good gracious,
fumed Egbert. I'm not thinking about sport. I want to

(09:23):
have the animal killed as soon as possible. Even Amanda's
opposition weakened when during church time on the following Sunday,
the otter made its way into the house, raided half
a salmon from the larder, and worried it into scaly
fragments on the persian rug in Agbert's studio. We shall

(09:44):
have it hiding under our beds and biting pieces out
of our feet before long, said Egbert, And from what
Amanda knew of this particular otter, she felt that the
possibility was not a remote one. On the evening preceding
the day fixed for the hunt, Amanda spent a solitary
hour walking by the banks of the stream, making what

(10:07):
she imagined to be hound noises. It was charitably supposed
by those who overheard her performance that she was practicing
for farmyard imitations at the forthcoming village entertainment. It was
her friend and neighbor, Aurora Burrett, who brought her news
of the day's sport. Pity you weren't out. We had

(10:28):
quite a good day. We found it at once in
the pool just below your garden. Did you kill? Asked Amanda.
Rather a fine she otter. Your husband got rather badly
bidden in trying to tail it, poor beast. I felt
quite sorry for it. It's had such a human look
in its eyes when it was killed. You'll call me silly,

(10:50):
but do you know who? The look reminded me of,
my dear woman? What is the matter? When Amanda had
recovered to a certain extent from her attack of nervous prostration,
Egbert took her to the Nile Valley to recuperate. Change
of scene speedily brought about the desired recovery of health

(11:10):
and mental balance. The escapades of an adventurous otterer in
search of a variation of diet were viewed in their
proper light. Amanda's normally placid temperament reasserted itself. Even a
hurricane of shouted curses coming from her husband's dressing room
in her husband's voice, but hardly in his usual vocabulary,

(11:33):
failed to disturb her serenity as she made a leisurely
toilet one evening in a Cairo hotel. What's the matter.
What has happened? She asked in amused curiosity. The little
beast has thrown all my clean shirts into the bath.
Wait till I catch you, you little What little beast?

(11:54):
Asked Amanda, suppressing a desire to laugh. Agbert's language was
so hopeless, sleepy inadequate to express his outraged feelings. A
little beast of a naked, brown Nubian boy, spluttered Egbert,
and now Amanda is seriously ill. And of Laura by

(12:18):
Saki