Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his
professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.
The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his
opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for nearly
everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in
his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are
necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual
antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his
imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to
the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things--such as illnesses
and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his
imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would
have succumbed long ago.
Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to
herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly
aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not
find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate
sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as
he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the
likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the
realm of his imagination she was locked out--an unclean thing, which
should find no entrance.
In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were
ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that
medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees
that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though
they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it
would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would
have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a
forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was
a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls
Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a
playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar
phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his
own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. 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. 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 ground 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, to-night 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. 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 he 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 paean 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.