3/5/24, 9:45 Tea by Saki | Short Stories

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Tea
Saki
8 min read · Rating: G

James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled conviction
that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-four he had done
nothing to justify that conviction. He liked and admired a great many women
collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for especial matrimonial
consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted
any particular peak as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this
matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded
women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and
two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the
married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most
innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of
unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being
who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk. No decent-
souled mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-
eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home
influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his family that he should
become enamoured of some nice marriageable girl, and when his Uncle Jules
departed this life and bequeathed him a comfortable little legacy it really seemed
the correct thing to do to set about discovering some one to share it with him. The
process of discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the
weight of public opinion than by any initiative of his own; a clear working
majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had pitched on

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Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range of acquaintance to
whom he might propose marriage, and James became gradually accustomed to the
idea that he and Joan would go together through the prescribed stages of
congratulations, present-receiving, Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and
eventual domesticity. It was necessary, however to ask the lady what she thought
about the matter; the family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with
ability and discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual
effort.

Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable residence in a

frame of mind that was moderately complacent. As the thing was going to be done
he was glad to feel that he was going to get it settled and off his mind that
afternoon. Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl like Joan, was a rather irksome
business, but one could not have a honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life
of married happiness without such preliminary. He wondered what Minorca was
really like as a place to stop in; in his mind's eye it was an island in perpetual half-
mourning, with black or white Minorca hens running all over it. Probably it would
not be a bit like that when one came to examine it. People who had been in Russia
had told him that they did not remember having seen any Muscovy ducks there, so
it was possible that there would be no Minorca fowls on the island.

His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock striking the
half-hour. Half-past four. A frown of dissatisfaction settled on his face. He would
arrive at the Sebastable mansion just at the hour of afternoon tea. Joan would be
seated at a low table, spread with an array of silver kettles and cream-jugs and
delicate porcelain tea-cups, behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a
series of little friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if any,
sugar, milk, cream, and so forth. "Is it one lump? I forgot. You do take milk, don't
you? Would you like some more hot water, if it's too strong?"

Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds of actual
experiences had told him that they were true to life. Thousands of women, at this
solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings,
with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions.
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Cushat-Prinkly detested the whole system of afternoon tea. According to his theory
of life a woman should lie on a divan or couch, talking with incomparable charm
or looking unutterable thoughts, or merely silent as a thing to be looked on, and
from behind a silken curtain a small Nubian page should silently bring in a tray
with cups and dainties, to be accepted silently, as a matter of course, without
drawn-out chatter about cream and sugar and hot water. If one's soul was really
enslaved at one's mistress's feet how could one talk coherently about weakened
tea? Cushat-Prinkly had never expounded his views on the subject to his mother;
all her life she had been accustomed to tinkle pleasantly at tea-time behind dainty
porcelain and silver, and if he had spoken to her about divans and Nubian pages
she would have urged him to take a week's holiday at the seaside. Now, as he
passed through a tangle of small streets that led indirectly to the elegant Mayfair
terrace for which he was bound, a horror at the idea of confronting Joan
Sebastable at her tea-table seized on him. A momentary deliverance presented
itself; on one floor of a narrow little house at the noisier end of Esquimault Street
lived Rhoda Ellam, a sort of remote cousin, who made a living by creating hats out
of costly materials. The hats really looked as if they had come from Paris; the
cheques she got for them unfortunately never looked as if they were going to
Paris. However, Rhoda appeared to find life amusing and to have a fairly good
time in spite of her straitened circumstances. Cushat-Prinkly decided to climb up
to her floor and defer by half-an-hour or so the important business which lay
before him; by spinning out his visit he could contrive to reach the Sebastable
mansion after the last vestiges of dainty porcelain had been cleared away.

Rhoda welcomed him into a room that seemed to do duty as workshop, sitting-
room, and kitchen combined, and to be wonderfully clean and comfortable at the
same time.

"I'm having a picnic meal," she announced. "There's caviare in that jar at your
elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut some more. Find yourself
a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things."

She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and made her visitor
talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the bread-and-butter with a masterly
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skill and produced red pepper and sliced lemon, where so many women would
merely have produced reasons and regrets for not having any. Cushat-Prinkly
found that he was enjoying an excellent tea without having to answer as many
questions about it as a Minister for Agriculture might be called on to reply to
during an outbreak of cattle plague.

"And now tell me why you have come to see me," said Rhoda suddenly. "You
arouse not merely my curiosity but my business instincts. I hope you've come
about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy the other day, and, of course, it
struck me that it would be a beautiful and desirable thing for you to celebrate the
event by buying brilliantly expensive hats for all your sisters. They may not have
said anything about it, but I feel sure the same idea has occurred to them. Of
course, with Goodwood on us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business
we're accustomed to that; we live in a series of rushes -- like the infant Moses."

"I didn't come about hats," said her visitor. "In fact, I don't think I really came
about anything. I was passing and I just thought I'd look in and see you. Since I've
been sitting talking to you, however, rather important idea has occurred to me. If
you'll forget Goodwood for a moment and listen to me, I'll tell you what it is."

Some forty minutes later James Cushat-Prinkly returned to the bosom of his
family, bearing an important piece of news.

"I'm engaged to be married," he announced.

A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke out.

"Ah, we knew! We saw it coming! We foretold it weeks ago!"

"I'll bet you didn't," said Cushat-Prinkly. "If any one had told me at lunch-time to-
day that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellam to marry me and that she was going to
accept me I would have laughed at the idea."

The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure compensated James's

women-folk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort and skilled
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diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their enthusiasm at a moment's

notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam; but, after all, it was James's wife who
was in question, and his tastes had some claim to be considered.

On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon in Minorca had
ended, Cushat-Prinkly came into the drawing-room of his new house in
Granchester Square. Rhoda was seated at a low table, behind a service of dainty
porcelain and gleaming silver. There was a pleasant tinkling note in her voice as
she handed him a cup.

"You like it weaker than that, don't you? Shall I put some more hot water to it?
No?"

family relationships marriage society

Written by Saki
Master of Edwardian wit and the macabre short story.

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