Forewarned

"Forewarned" is a short story by Hector Hugh Munro, known by his pen name Saki. The narrative revolves around themes of irony and social critique, showcasing Munro's signature wit and biting satire. The story unfolds through the interaction of a group of characters who find themselves entangled in a web of superstitions and unexpected outcomes. As events take a surprising turn, the tale explores human nature's tendency toward disbelief in the extraordinary, ultimately revealing Munro's sharp commentary on society and the follies of its inhabitants.

• Short story

								
Alethia Debchance sat in a corner of an otherwise empty railway carriage,
more or less at ease as regarded body, but in some trepidation as to
mind.  She had embarked on a social adventure of no little magnitude as
compared with the accustomed seclusion and stagnation of her past life.
At the age of twenty-eight she could look back on nothing more eventful
than the daily round of her existence in her aunt's house at
Webblehinton, a hamlet four and a half miles distant from a country town
and about a quarter of a century removed from modern times.  Their
neighbours had been elderly and few, not much given to social
intercourse, but helpful or politely sympathetic in times of illness.
Newspapers of the ordinary kind were a rarity; those that Alethia saw
regularly were devoted exclusively either to religion or to poultry, and
the world of politics was to her an unheeded unexplored region.  Her
ideas on life in general had been acquired through the medium of popular
respectable novel-writers, and modified or emphasised by such knowledge
as her aunt, the vicar, and her aunt's housekeeper had put at her
disposal.  And now, in her twenty-ninth year, her aunt's death had left
her, well provided for as regards income, but somewhat isolated in the
matter of kith and kin and human companionship.  She had some cousins who
were on terms of friendly, though infrequent, correspondence with her,
but as they lived permanently in Ceylon, a locality about which she knew
little, beyond the assurance contained in the missionary hymn that the
human element there was vile, they were not of much immediate use to her.
Other cousins she also possessed, more distant as regards relationship,
but not quite so geographically remote, seeing that they lived somewhere
in the Midlands.  She could hardly remember ever having met them, but
once or twice in the course of the last three or four years they had
expressed a polite wish that she should pay them a visit; they had
probably not been unduly depressed by the fact that her aunt's failing
health had prevented her from accepting their invitation.  The note of
condolence that had arrived on the occasion of her aunt's death had
included a vague hope that Alethia would find time in the near future to
spend a few days with her cousins, and after much deliberation and many
hesitations she had written to propose herself as a guest for a definite
date some week ahead.  The family, she reflected with relief, was not a
large one; the two daughters were married and away, there was only old
Mrs. Bludward and her son Robert at home.  Mrs. Bludward was something of
an invalid, and Robert was a young man who had been at Oxford and was
going into Parliament.  Further than that Alethia's information did not
go; her imagination, founded on her extensive knowledge of the people one
met in novels, had to supply the gaps.  The mother was not difficult to
place; she would either be an ultra-amiable old lady, bearing her feeble
health with uncomplaining fortitude, and having a kind word for the
gardener's boy and a sunny smile for the chance visitor, or else she
would be cold and peevish, with eyes that pierced you like a gimlet, and
a unreasoning idolatry of her son.  Alethia's imagination rather inclined
her to the latter view.  Robert was more of a problem.  There were three
dominant types of manhood to be taken into consideration in working out
his classification; there was Hugo, who was strong, good, and beautiful,
a rare type and not very often met with; there was Sir Jasper, who was
utterly vile and absolutely unscrupulous, and there was Nevil, who was
not really bad at heart, but had a weak mouth and usually required the
life-work of two good women to keep him from ultimate disaster.  It was
probable, Alethia considered, that Robert came into the last category, in
which case she was certain to enjoy the companionship of one or two
excellent women, and might possibly catch glimpses of undesirable
adventuresses or come face to face with reckless admiration-seeking
married women.  It was altogether an exciting prospect, this sudden
venture into an unexplored world of unknown human beings, and Alethia
rather wished that she could have taken the vicar with her; she was not,
however, rich or important enough to travel with a chaplain, as the
Marquis of Moystoncleugh always did in the novel she had just been
reading, so she recognised that such a proceeding was out of the
question.

The train which carried Alethia towards her destination was a local one,
with the wayside station habit strongly developed.  At most of the
stations no one seemed to want to get into the train or to leave it, but
at one there were several market folk on the platform, and two men, of
the farmer or small cattle-dealer class, entered Alethia's carriage.
Apparently they had just foregathered, after a day's business, and their
conversation consisted of a rapid exchange of short friendly inquiries as
to health, family, stock, and so forth, and some grumbling remarks on the
weather.  Suddenly, however, their talk took a dramatically interesting
turn, and Alethia listened with wide-eyed attention.

"What do you think of Mister Robert Bludward, eh?"

There was a certain scornful ring in his question.

"Robert Bludward?  An out-an'-out rotter, that's what he is.  Ought to be
ashamed to look any decent man in the face.  Send him to Parliament to
represent us--not much!  He'd rob a poor man of his last shilling, he
would."

"Ah, that he would.  Tells a pack of lies to get our votes, that's all
that he's after, damn him.  Did you see the way the Argus showed him up
this week?  Properly exposed him, hip and thigh, I tell you."

And so on they ran, in their withering indictment.  There could be no
doubt that it was Alethia's cousin and prospective host to whom they were
referring; the allusion to a Parliamentary candidature settled that.  What
could Robert Bludward have done, what manner of man could he be, that
people should speak of him with such obvious reprobation?

"He was hissed down at Shoalford yesterday," said one of the speakers.

Hissed!  Had it come to that?  There was something dramatically biblical
in the idea of Robert Bludward's neighbours and acquaintances hissing him
for very scorn.  Lord Hereward Stranglath had been hissed, now Alethia
came to think of it, in the eighth chapter of Matterby Towers, while in
the act of opening a Wesleyan bazaar, because he was suspected (unjustly
as it turned out afterwards) of having beaten the German governess to
death.  And in Tainted Guineas Roper Squenderby had been deservedly
hissed, on the steps of the Jockey Club, for having handed a rival owner
a forged telegram, containing false news of his mother's death, just
before the start for an important race, thereby ensuring the withdrawal
of his rival's horse.  In placid Saxon-blooded England people did not
demonstrate their feelings lightly and without some strong compelling

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