The Lumber Room (Saki)
Short summary
England, early 20th century. Nicholas was punished for putting a frog in his bread-and-milk at breakfast. The adults had insisted there could not possibly be a frog there, but Nicholas had placed it himself and proved them wrong.
As punishment, his cousins and younger brother were taken to the beach at Jagborough while Nicholas had to stay home. His aunt forbade him from entering the gooseberry garden. Nicholas pretended he wanted to get into the garden, making his aunt watch both doors all afternoon. Meanwhile, he secretly retrieved a key and entered the forbidden lumber-room.
Inside, Nicholas discovered wonderful treasures: a tapestry depicting a huntsman who had shot a stag but might be attacked by wolves, twisted candlesticks shaped like snakes, a duck-shaped teapot, brass figures, and a book full of exotic birds. While he examined these objects, his aunt called for him from the gooseberry garden, having fallen into the rain-water tank. Nicholas refused to help her.
'Now I know that you are the Evil One and not aunt,' shouted Nicholas gleefully; 'when we asked...for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn't any... Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!'
A kitchenmaid eventually rescued the aunt. At tea that evening, everyone was miserable: the trip to Jagborough had been ruined because high tide left no beach to play on, Bobby's tight boots had hurt him all afternoon, and the aunt maintained frozen silence after her humiliating detention in the tank. Nicholas remained silent too, absorbed in thoughts about whether the huntsman might escape the wolves.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The frog incident and Nicholass punishment
One morning, the children were to be taken as a special treat to the sands at Jagborough. However, one child was excluded from this expedition — he was in disgrace for refusing to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk, claiming there was a frog in it. The older and wiser people insisted this was impossible and accused him of talking nonsense. The boy continued to describe the frog's coloration and markings in great detail. The dramatic twist was that there really was a frog in the bowl — he had put it there himself.
While the sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into his breakfast was discussed at length, what stood out clearest to Nicholas was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved profoundly wrong about something they had expressed with utmost assurance. He repeated with tactical insistence: 'You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk.'
the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair... was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance.
As punishment, Nicholas's boy-cousin, girl-cousin, and younger brother were to go to Jagborough that afternoon while he stayed home. His cousins' aunt, who styled herself his aunt by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, had hastily invented the expedition to impress upon Nicholas the delights he had forfeited by his disgraceful conduct.
It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred...
When the moment for departure arrived, all the crying was done by the girl-cousin, who scraped her knee painfully against the carriage step. Nicholas cheerfully noted how she howled as the party drove off. The aunt assured everyone it would be a glorious afternoon for racing about on those beautiful sands. Nicholas grimly chuckled that his younger brother wouldn't enjoy himself much — his boots were too tight and hurting him. When the aunt asked why the boy hadn't told her, Nicholas replied that he had told her twice, but she wasn't listening.
The deception and entry into the lumber room
The aunt changed the subject and forbade Nicholas from entering the gooseberry garden. When he asked why, she replied loftily that it was because he was in disgrace. Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of this reasoning — he felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden simultaneously. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy. It became clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into the gooseberry garden, only because she had told him he was not to.
The gooseberry garden had two doors, and the aunt spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations where she could watch both entrances to the forbidden paradise. Nicholas made one or two sorties toward the doors, but never evaded her watchful eye.
he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on self-imposed sentry-duty...
Having thoroughly confirmed her suspicions, Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly executed a plan long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library, he reached a shelf holding a fat, important-looking key. This key secured the mysteries of the lumber-room from unauthorized intrusion. Nicholas had practiced with the schoolroom door key for days — he did not believe in trusting too much to luck. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned.
The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure.
Exploring the forbidden treasures
The lumber-room came up to Nicholas's expectations. It was large and dimly lit, with one high window opening onto the forbidden garden as its only source of illumination. It was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. The aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who thought things spoiled by use and consigned them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. While the parts of the house Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast on.
First and foremost was a piece of framed tapestry evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story. He sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details. A man dressed in hunting costume had just transfixed a stag with an arrow. It could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away. In the thickly growing vegetation, it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs springing forward had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged.
did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction...? would the man and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an attack?
The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both. All one knew about his skill was that he could hit a large stag at ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes revolving the possibilities of the scene. He was inclined to think there were more than four wolves and that the man and his dogs were in a tight corner.
Other objects of delight claimed his attention: quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, a teapot fashioned like a china duck from whose open beak tea was supposed to come, and a carved sandalwood box packed tight with aromatic cotton-wool. Between the layers were little brass figures — hump-necked bulls, peacocks, and goblins, delightful to see and handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers. Nicholas peeped into it and found it full of coloured pictures of birds — herons, bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. As he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning it a life-history, his aunt's voice came in shrill vociferation from the gooseberry garden.
She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance and leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of lilac bushes. She was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes, screaming that he must come out at once. It was probably the first time for twenty years that anyone had smiled in that lumber-room.
The aunt trapped and Nicholass clever revenge
Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas's name gave way to a shriek and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place, shook dust from a neighbouring pile of newspapers over it, crept from the room, locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it. His aunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the front garden.
When he asked who was calling, the answer came from the other side of the wall. The aunt explained she had been looking for him in the gooseberry garden and had slipped into the rain-water tank. Luckily there was no water in it, but the sides were slippery and she couldn't get out. She asked him to fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree. Nicholas promptly reminded her that he had been told not to go into the gooseberry garden. The voice from the tank impatiently told him that now he was being told he may.
'Your voice doesn't sound like aunt's,' objected Nicholas; 'you may be the Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the Evil One tempts me and that I always yield. This time I'm not going to yield.'
The prisoner in the tank told him not to talk nonsense and to fetch the ladder. Nicholas innocently asked if there would be strawberry jam for tea. The aunt said certainly there would be, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it. Nicholas gleefully shouted that now he knew she was the Evil One and not aunt. When they had asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday, she said there wasn't any. He knew there were four jars in the store cupboard because he had looked, and of course the Evil One knew it was there, but aunt didn't because she said there wasn't any.
There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt as though one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas knew with childish discernment that such luxuries were not to be over-indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the aunt from the rain-water tank.
The silent tea and failed expedition
Tea that evening was partaken of in fearsome silence.
The tide had been at its highest when the children had arrived at Jagborough Cove, so there had been no sands to play on--a circumstance that the aunt had overlooked in the haste of organising her punative expedition.
The tightness of the younger brother's boots had had a disastrous effect on his temper the whole afternoon, and altogether the children could not have been said to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who had suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he too was silent, in the absorption of one who had much to think about. It was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.