Mrs Packletide's Tiger By Saki

Saki, (1870-1916), whose real name was Hector Hugh Munro, was a British

writer, whose witty stories satirized the society and culture of his day. He was

considered a master of the short story.

1.It was Mrs. Packletide's pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that

the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave India

safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast

per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for

her sudden deviation towards the footsteps of

Nimrod

recently been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane

by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else;

only a personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy

harvest of press photographs could successfully

counter that sort of thing. Mrs. Packletide had

already arranged in her mind the lunch she would

give at her house in Curzon Street,

Loona Bimberton's honour, with a tiger-skin rug

occupying most of the foreground and all of the

conversation. She had also already designed in her

mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going to

give Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a

world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was

an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona

Bimberton.

2. Circumstances proved

the opportunity of shooting a tiger without over-much risk or exertion, and it so

happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured

was the fact that Loona Bimberton hadostensibly inpropitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand rupees forrendezvous

of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing

infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to the smaller

domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the

sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on

the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his

attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats

were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present

quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date

appointed for the memsahib's shoot. Mothers carrying their babies home through the

jungle after the day's work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the

restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.

3. The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in

a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and

her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat,

such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night,

was

nail pack of patience cards

4. "I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin.

5. She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of

performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.

6. "Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide; "it's a very old tiger. It couldn't spring up here even if

it wanted to."

7. "If it's an old tiger I think you

ought to get it cheaper. A

thousand rupees is a lot of

money."

8. Louisa Mebbin adopted a

protective elder-sister

attitude towards money in

general, irrespective of

nationality or denomination.

Her energetic intervention

had saved many a rouble

from dissipating itself in tips

in some Moscow hotel, and

francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have

driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Her speculations as to the market

depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the

animal itself. As soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth,

seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the

purpose of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack.

9. "I believe it's ill," said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani, for the benefit of the village

headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring tree.

10. "Hush!" said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced ambling

towards his victim.

11. "Now, now!" urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; "if he doesn't touch the goat we

needn't pay for it." (The bait was an extra.)

12. The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny beast sprang to one side

and then rolled over in the stillness of death. In a moment a crowd of excited natives

had swarmed on to the scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news to the

village, where a thumping of

tom-toms took up the chorus of

triumph. And their triumph and

rejoicing found a ready echo in

the heart of Mrs. Packletide;

already that luncheon-party in

Cur zon St reet seemed

immeasurably nearer.

13. It was Louisa Mebbin who drew

attention to the fact that the

goat was in death-throes from

a mortal bullet-wound, while no

trace of the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong animal

had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the

sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by

pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead

tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction

that she had shot the beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore did

Mrs. Packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured fame reached

from the pages of the

the

for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was a model of

repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined; there are limits beyond which

repressed emotions become dangerous.

14. "How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened," said Louisa

Mebbin a few days after the ball.

15. "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.

16. "How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss Mebbin, with her

disagreeably pleasant laugh.

17. "No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing colour as rapidly as

though it were going through a

18. "Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's face settled on an

unbecoming shade of greenish white.

19. "You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked.

20. "I've seen a week-end cottage near Darking that I should rather like to buy," said Miss

Mebbin with seeming irrelevance. "Six hundred and eighty, freehold. Quite a bargain,

only I don't happen to have the money."

* * *

21. Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her "

in summer-time with its garden borders of tiger-lilies, is the wonder and admiration of

her friends.

22. "It is a marvel how Louisa manages to do it," is the general verdict.

23. Mrs. Packletide indulges in no more big-game shooting.
24. "The incidental expenses are so heavy," she confides to inquiring friends.

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