Gabriel-Ernest

"Gabriel-Ernest" is a short story by Hector Hugh Munro, also known as Saki. The narrative revolves around the unexpected and eerie encounter between a landowner, Mr. and Mrs. Pulteney, and a wild boy named Gabriel-Ernest, who claims to be a wolf and exhibits strange, animalistic behavior. As the plot unfolds, the Pulteneys grapple with the unsettling presence of Gabriel-Ernest, exploring themes of civilization versus the primal instincts of nature, and the thin veneer of societal norms. The story is known for its dark humor, sharp wit, and ironic twist, characteristic of Saki's storytelling style.

• Short story

								
"There is a wild beast in your woods," said the artist Cunningham, as he
was being driven to the station.  It was the only remark he had made
during the drive, but as Van Cheele had talked incessantly his
companion's silence had not been noticeable.

"A stray fox or two and some resident weasels.  Nothing more formidable,"
said Van Cheele.  The artist said nothing.

"What did you mean about a wild beast?" said Van Cheele later, when they
were on the platform.

"Nothing.  My imagination.  Here is the train," said Cunningham.

That afternoon Van Cheele went for one of his frequent rambles through
his woodland property.  He had a stuffed bittern in his study, and knew
the names of quite a number of wild flowers, so his aunt had possibly
some justification in describing him as a great naturalist.  At any rate,
he was a great walker.  It was his custom to take mental notes of
everything he saw during his walks, not so much for the purpose of
assisting contemporary science as to provide topics for conversation
afterwards.  When the bluebells began to show themselves in flower he
made a point of informing every one of the fact; the season of the year
might have warned his hearers of the likelihood of such an occurrence,
but at least they felt that he was being absolutely frank with them.

What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however, something
far removed from his ordinary range of experience.  On a shelf of smooth
stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an oak coppice a boy of
about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown limbs luxuriously in the
sun.  His wet hair, parted by a recent dive, lay close to his head, and
his light-brown eyes, so light that there was an almost tigerish gleam in
them, were turned towards Van Cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness.
It was an unexpected apparition, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in
the novel process of thinking before he spoke.  Where on earth could this
wild-looking boy hail from?  The miller's wife had lost a child some two
months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race, but that
had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad.

"What are you doing there?" he demanded.

"Obviously, sunning myself," replied the boy.

"Where do you live?"

"Here, in these woods."

"You can't live in the woods," said Van Cheele.

"They are very nice woods," said the boy, with a touch of patronage in
his voice.

"But where do you sleep at night?"

"I don't sleep at night; that's my busiest time."

Van Cheele began to have an irritated feeling that he was grappling with
a problem that was eluding him.

"What do you feed on?" he asked.

"Flesh," said the boy, and he pronounced the word with slow relish, as
though he were tasting it.

"Flesh!  What Flesh?"

"Since it interests you, rabbits, wild-fowl, hares, poultry, lambs in
their season, children when I can get any; they're usually too well
locked in at night, when I do most of my hunting.  It's quite two months
since I tasted child-flesh."

Ignoring the chaffing nature of the last remark Van Cheele tried to draw
the boy on the subject of possible poaching operations.

"You're talking rather through your hat when you speak of feeding on
hares."  (Considering the nature of the boy's toilet the simile was
hardly an apt one.)  "Our hillside hares aren't easily caught."

"At night I hunt on four feet," was the somewhat cryptic response.

"I suppose you mean that you hunt with a dog?" hazarded Van Cheele.

The boy rolled slowly over on to his back, and laughed a weird low laugh,
that was pleasantly like a chuckle and disagreeably like a snarl.

"I don't fancy any dog would be very anxious for my company, especially
at night."

Van Cheele began to feel that there was something positively uncanny
about the strange-eyed, strange-tongued youngster.

"I can't have you staying in these woods," he declared authoritatively.

"I fancy you'd rather have me here than in your house," said the boy.

The prospect of this wild, nude animal in Van Cheele's primly ordered
house was certainly an alarming one.

"If you don't go.  I shall have to make you," said Van Cheele.

The boy turned like a flash, plunged into the pool, and in a moment had
flung his wet and glistening body half-way up the bank where Van Cheele
was standing.  In an otter the movement would not have been remarkable;
in a boy Van Cheele found it sufficiently startling.  His foot slipped as
he made an involuntarily backward movement, and he found himself almost
prostrate on the slippery weed-grown bank, with those tigerish yellow
eyes not very far from his own.  Almost instinctively he half raised his
hand to his throat.  They boy laughed again, a laugh in which the snarl
had nearly driven out the chuckle, and then, with another of his
astonishing lightning movements, plunged out of view into a yielding
tangle of weed and fern.

"What an extraordinary wild animal!" said Van Cheele as he picked himself
up.  And then he recalled Cunningham's remark "There is a wild beast in
your woods."

Walking slowly homeward, Van Cheele began to turn over in his mind
various local occurrences which might be traceable to the existence of
this astonishing young savage.

Something had been thinning the game in the woods lately, poultry had
been missing from the farms, hares were growing unaccountably scarcer,
and complaints had reached him of lambs being carried off bodily from the
hills.  Was it possible that this wild boy was really hunting the
countryside in company with some clever poacher dogs?  He had spoken of
hunting "four-footed" by night, but then, again, he had hinted strangely
at no dog caring to come near him, "especially at night."  It was
certainly puzzling.  And then, as Van Cheele ran his mind over the
various depredations that had been committed during the last month or
two, he came suddenly to a dead stop, alike in his walk and his
speculations.  The child missing from the mill two months ago--the
accepted theory was that it had tumbled into the mill-race and been swept
away; but the mother had always declared she had heard a shriek on the
hill side of the house, in the opposite direction from the water.  It was
unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that
uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago.  Such dreadful
things should not be said even in fun.

Van Cheele, contrary to his usual wont, did not feel disposed to be
communicative about his discovery in the wood.  His position as a parish
councillor and justice of the peace seemed somehow compromised by the
fact that he was harbouring a personality of such doubtful repute on his
property; there was even a possibility that a heavy bill of damages for
raided lambs and poultry might be laid at his door.  At dinner that night

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes