The Mistake of "What Do You Think?"

I see people on social media, who post a new haircut, or a new outfit, and ask their friends, "What do you think?"

I have a problem with that idea, and it has to do with stories, of course. Because I post creative work, and I think about it. As far as I'm concerned, the entire universe is made of stories, and not atoms, but that's another blog for another time...

Keeping My Own Counsel

I don't post stories and ask, "What do you think?" of anyone. Not even beta readers.

There's no point, because each person will tell you something different.

Those that like you may or may not tell you the truth, because you're friends and they don't want to screw that up with drama.

Those that don't like you are not likely to like your work anyway. If they're trolls deep down, they'll take a certain pleasure in you handing them your heart on a platter to stick a fork into, chew it up and spit it out into little muscly chunks on the floor...you know what I'm talking about.

Even if they like you, they're brave and honest enough to tell you when you suck, and kind enough to try to do it nicely (such a person is almost a unicorn in this world, so treasure them if you know someone like this), you'll still get very different feedback, based on personal tastes, which is no one's fault.

I actually consider this my fault if I ask this question, and I'll tell you why.

Ask a Better Question

If someone asks me, "What do you think?", I immediately know that person doesn't trust their own opinion. I've done it too, I've been there, but I've learned since then that I have eyeballs. I have my own personal tastes and styles. I know when I like something, or I don't. Sometimes I even know why, and can articulate it.

So, when I post a story, I don't ask, "Do you like it?"

I ask, "How does this make you feel? Does it bore you? Where? Do you feel like it's missing something? What do you think that is?"

Better yet, I ask, "What's your favorite part? What do you like about it?"

That's some real feedback right there.

The World's Best Advice on Critics and Criticism

Right here...

"The Bet" by Anton Chekhov - Part Four

Don't start at the end!

(Although, admittedly, I sometimes do that. Why live with questions when you don't have to?)

If you are an end-reader, come back to Part One and Part Two and Part Three to get the whole picture...

***

"Poor creature!" thought the banker, "he is asleep and most likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most conscientious expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here. . . ."

The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you.

 

With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world.

"For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women. . . .

Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl.

 

In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson.

I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God. . . .

In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms. . . .

"Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.

"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world.

It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty.

You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact. . . ."

When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, and went out of the lodge, weeping.

At no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from sleeping.

Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him they had seen the man who lived in the lodge climb out of the window into the garden, go to the gate, and disappear.

The banker went at once with the servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his prisoner.

To avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in which the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in the fireproof safe.

 

***

That's it! All done!

And I'm not sure how I feel about that ending...but these kind of endings, this ambiguousness that challenges the mind, can sometimes be more satisfying than the everything-happily-tied-neatly-in-a-bow ending.

What do you think?

"The Bet" by Anton Chekhov - Part Three

Parts One and Part Two, both well worth reading, can be found here if you're not caught up to speed yet.

If you are, dive right in. We're back at the beginning...

***
The Bet - Part Three
By Anton Chekhov

 

The old banker remembered all this, and thought:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he will regain his freedom. By our agreement I ought to pay him two millions. If I do pay him, it is all over with me: I shall be utterly ruined."

Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reckoning; now he was afraid to ask himself which were greater, his debts or his assets.

Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments.

"Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die?

He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day the same sentence: 'I am indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!' No, it is too much! The one means of being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the death of that man!"

It struck three o'clock, the banker listened; everyone was asleep in the house and nothing could be heard outside but the rustling of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he took from a fireproof safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.

It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp cutting wind was racing about the garden, howling and giving the trees no rest.

The banker strained his eyes, but could see neither the earth nor the white statues, nor the lodge, nor the trees. Going to the spot where the lodge stood, he twice called the watchman.

No answer followed.

Evidently the watchman had sought shelter from the weather, and was now asleep somewhere either in the kitchen or in the greenhouse.

"If I had the pluck to carry out my intention," thought the old man, "Suspicion would fall first upon the watchman."

He felt in the darkness for the steps and the door, and went into the entry of the lodge. Then he groped his way into a little passage and lighted a match.

There was not a soul there. There was a bedstead with no bedding on it, and in the corner there was a dark cast-iron stove. The seals on the door leading to the prisoner's rooms were intact.

When the match went out the old man, trembling with emotion, peeped through the little window.

A candle was burning dimly in the prisoner's room. He was sitting at the table.

 

Nothing could be seen but his back, the hair on his head, and his hands. Open books were lying on the table, on the two easy-chairs, and on the carpet near the table.

Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fifteen years' imprisonment had taught him to sit still.

The banker tapped at the window with his finger, and the prisoner made no movement whatever in response. Then the banker cautiously broke the seals off the door and put the key in the keyhole.

The rusty lock gave a grating sound and the door creaked. The banker expected to hear at once footsteps and a cry of astonishment, but three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the room.

He made up his mind to go in.

At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with long curls like a woman's and a shaggy beard.

His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his shaggy head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it.

His hair was already streaked with silver, and seeing his emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only forty.

 

He was asleep. . . . In front of his bowed head there lay on the table a sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine handwriting.

 

***

What's in the note? Guess we'll find out tomorrow, in our final installment of this story...

"The Bet" by Anton Chekhov - Part Two

Just out of curiosity, I found an inflation calculator online to check and see what this bet would actually be worth today.

Anton Chekhov wrote this story in 1889, and the farthest back the inflation calculator would let me go was 1914.

So, if this story took place in 1915, the young man bet fifteen years of his life to win an amount of money that would be over 47 million dollars today.

Two million just doesn't sound like much - but 47 million dollars!

Would you give up fifteen years of your life, living in jail, for 47 million dollars at the end of that time? Ever after fifteen more years of inflation, I'd say that would be quite a chunk of change!

Look back at Part One if you missed this part - and now, they set the terms of the contract...

***
The Bet - Part Two
By Anton Chekhov

It was decided that the young man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters and newspapers.

He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke.

By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He might have anything he wanted -- books, music, wine, and so on -- in any quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them through the window.

The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there _exactly_ fifteen years, beginning from twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the obligation to pay him two millions.

For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and night from his lodge.

He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites the desires, and desires are the worst foes of the prisoner; and besides, nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one. And tobacco spoilt the air of his room.

In the first year the books he sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.

In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner asked only for the classics.

In the fifth year music was audible again, and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the window said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning and angrily talking to himself.

He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had written. More than once he could be heard crying.

In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly into these studies -- so much so that the banker had enough to do to get him the books he ordered.

In the course of four years some six hundred volumes were procured at his request. It was during this period that the banker received the following letter from his prisoner:

"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show them to people who know the languages. Let them read them. If they find not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That shot will show me that my efforts have not been thrown away.

The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages, but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them!"

The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the garden.

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and histories of religion followed the Gospels.

In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At one time he was busy with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare.

There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.

***

Will he make it? The experience is changing him in significant ways. Come back tomorrow and find out how...

I Blame Math...and "The Bet" by Chekhov - Part One

My own writing has slowed tremendously over the past few weeks. I think it's because my reading changed - I've been reading a lot more nonfiction, as well as brushing up on my math for when I start back to school next year.

I went to Khan Academy and took their diagnostic test to see where my math level was at. I kid you not...somehow I ended up at "Put six pretty flowers in this box" level math.

It's been a very long time since school. On the bright side, my lessons thus far have been progressing very quickly. I should be in the 4th grade in no time. :-)

So I'm still about 12 short stories into my challenge, and looking for another idea to take hold.

In the meantime, I'm reading Chekhov, and I think you should too. Just because even when one cannot write, one should always read.

Although Chekhov himself might say otherwise...

***

The Bet
By Anton Chekhov

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn evening.

There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of capital punishment.

The majority of the guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.

"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge _a priori_, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"

"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both have the same object -- to take away life. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said:

"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:

"It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years."

"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years."

"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions!"

"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young man.

And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said:

"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two millions are a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison. I am sorry for you."

 

And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money. . . ."

Then he remembered what followed that evening.

***

What happened next? Oh, you've got to wait til tomorrow to find out...

Family Story - The Haunted House at 276 Gemini Drive

Later on, we moved to 276 Gemini Drive in Salt Lake City. I believe my parents had this house built. My father had the intention for us to live there forever - this would be the last house we owned. But his gypsy blood would prove to be too powerful.

These pictures were taken from the side of the house, and it looked positively like a castle. Felt like one to a kid. There was so much more room inside, and I loved that about that house when we first moved in. If you Google it today, it looks like an overgrown haunted house, which is what it felt like inside later on. But I digress...

The backyard was spacious. We had a clothesline out back, and Mom would hang the clothes and sheets and my brothers and I would run between them and knock them down and get in trouble. They smelled so good when we brought them in.

There was a group of apartments next door that I have no memory of visiting ever; they were pretty shady. My brother and I played with the kids from over there sometimes. I remember shooting marbles with them on occasion, and those marbles were so fascinating and beautiful. I would beg my parents for marbles, and keep bags of them in my drawers.

My father's parents lived down in our basement - the green station wagon in the picture was their car. Sometimes we got to go for a drive with them. There were no seat belts in that car. I don't remember the red car...our car was big and brown...could be the one in the next picture.

The Wasatch Mountains could be seen out of the windows, and they were so beautiful. I used to sit and watch them, and sometimes draw them, for hours.

But there was something off about that house, and I could never quite figure out what it was. Something shadowy would follow me, like a thought in the back of my mind.

I think my parents started having some marital problems then. Probably financial problems too - things were a lot worse than they ever let on. My mom tried to sell Amway for a time to make some money. I used to sneak into her sample case and eat her food bars (they were good).

I came to hate the basement, for several reasons. The stairs that descended down to the staircase were very short, and I was always afraid of falling. The stairs turned sharply downward, and with the back door closed, the staircase wasn't well-lit, so walking down into darkness brought up all sorts of fears for me. It felt haunted down there.

My grandparents lived in the room to the left at the bottom of the stairs, which didn't help. I didn't have a very close relationship with them. I don't know why, but something about them scared me, so I avoided them, for the most part. Then the basement went further back into a laundry room, a bathroom, and over to the left, some sort of a family room. The room was largely underground, with tiny windows near the top that let in some light at the ground level.

The basement was also largely unfinished, so you could see the bones of the house down there, and the insulation. There were spiders down there occasionally, which freaked me out, so I always went down there on a heightened sense of alert.

Sometimes my mother would have me do the laundry, and I would have to use the washing machine.

This machine was new to us, but I'm willing to bet it was incredibly old. The only other time I've ever seen anything like it was in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History - THAT'S how old I am, people. I grew up with stuff you can only see in museums now.

It was fun to watch it wash, but then you had to put it through the wringer. And that was scary, because it could catch your fingers and squash them. If the clothes were thin, that was fine. It would roll the clothes through and into the laundry basket to hang on the line.

But if it was a thick blanket, and the wringer couldn't squish it properly, the wringer would open and stop with this intense banging noise, which would scare me. As a child, I was incredibly afraid of sudden loud noises, and the possibility of this happening caused me no end of anxiety.

Lots of other memories in this house. Once I tried to hold a community carnival to raise money for the Jerry Lewis telethon - got a whopping nine people to come out, and raised a grand total of around nine dollars. Still, I sent in my money, and got a thank-you certificate with Jerry Lewis' face on it.

We played broom hockey in the front yard, and one of my brothers hit me in the face with the edge of the plastic broom. There was so much blood in my eyes I couldn't see. I thought I was dying. But it was just a tiny cut on my forehead.

My brother and I took a gerbil out front, out of his cage, and my brother threw him up in the air. I don't remember why, but he dropped the gerbil and it broke its back. We watched that poor gerbil suffer for weeks in its tank, dragging its body from side to side, paralyzed from the waist down. Finally it died, and we buried it under those steps in the front yard.

My dad's brother, Uncle Tommy, would come to visit us every so often, and he was so cool. He had a Jeep, and would take us out riding in it.

At one point, my dad moved away. He'd gotten a job in Las Vegas, and we were going to sell the house and move over to be with him. But selling the house took a long time, so he was gone for months and months. When he came back to visit one day, we went to Liberty Park with my dad. He was in really high spirits. I remember him sliding down the slide at the park with his legs up in the air. It was so funny. Then he landed at the bottom, and he didn't get up. I came over to try to sit on him, and he yelled at me to get away, and I didn't understand why. He just laid there on his side, and yelled at my brother Michael to run and get Mom.

He'd broken his ankle. Had to get a cast and rest it. We had to avoid getting close to him because it hurt him a lot. If we made him mad, we'd get spanked. Then he was gone again, and it was just us again for a long time. It was a very uneasy time.

One evening, there was talk on the news that the governments had bombs and they were going to bomb the whole world with bombs that made huge clouds and destroyed everything. I went out that night on the front porch, and sat and wondered if I was going to live to grow up. I was only ten years old. Was I going to live to be older?

Finally my mom managed to sell the house, and we got a huge moving van and filled it to move to Las Vegas. Mom did all the packing, and there wasn't a spare bit of room anywhere in that van. We drove away and never came back. My parents never bought a house again for another thirty years or so.

Next week I'll share some stories of the wider neighborhood we lived in in that house.

Saki and "Sredni Vashtar" - Part Four

Don't miss Parts One, Two or Three, if you did. Here's the final part.

His secret is out, and it looks like his last little bit of enjoyment he took in his pets is gone...

***
Sredni Vashtar - Part Four
By Saki

It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself.

He saw the Woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience.

And Conradin fervently 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 presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch.

And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

 

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane.

The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door.

A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched.

Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the pæan of victory and devastation.

And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat.

Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

"Tea is ready," said the sour-faced maid; "where is the mistress?"

"She went down to the shed some time ago," said Conradin.

 

And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded 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 fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door.

The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

"Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!" exclaimed a shrill voice.

And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.

 ***

My father used to own a ferret. It used to try and bite my ankles while I was watching television, but I never knew it could kill anyone. That 'woman' must have been made out of tissue paper or something if a ferret could kill her.

Anyway, THE END! Still working on my next story, but if it's still not ready, there'll be another selection next week.

Saki and "Sredni Vashtar" - Part Three

Part One and Part Two are at these links if you missed them.

So goes the Anabaptist hen at the hands of Conradin's malicious cousin...what next? His other friend?

***
Sredni Vashtar - Part Three
By Saki

With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning.

But Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the grounds that it was bad for him; also because the making of it "gave trouble," a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

"I thought you liked toast," she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

 

"Sometimes," said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight he asked a boon.

"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty corner, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: "Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."

 

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

"What are you keeping in that locked hutch?" she asked. "I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared away."

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery.

***

Looks like it's all over for Conradin - but not yet. More story coming tomorrow...

Saki and "Sredni Vashtar" - Part Two

Catch Part One if you missed it here.

And, we go on. Who's in the shed?

***
Sredni Vashtar - Part Two
By Saki

In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet.

 

Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver.

 

Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin.

And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion.

 The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon.

 

Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret.

Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction.

And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.

These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist.

He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. "It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers," she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight.

 

***

That's not good.

But he's just a boy. What can Conradin do? Find out tomorrow...