The Open Window by --- Saki (H.H.

Munro)

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very

selfpossessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and

put up with me."

Framton Nuttel endeavored to say the correct something which

should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting

the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whethe

r these formal visits

on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the

nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to

migrate to this rural

retreat; " you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living

soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just

give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of

them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice

division.

"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece,

when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the

rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of

introduction to some of the people here."

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the

selfpossessed young lady.

"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was

wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state.

An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine

habitation.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child;

"that would be since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot

tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an

October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that

opened on to a lawn.

"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has

that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"

"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband

and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never

came back. In crossing the moor to their favorite snipe-shooting ground

they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been
that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other

years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never

recovered. That was the dreadful part of it."

Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became

falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back

someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and

walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is

kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often

told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat

over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do

you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her

nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost

get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window-"

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when

the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in

making her appearance.

"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

"She has been very interesting," said Framton.

"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton

briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting,

and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the

marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like

you menfolk, isn't it?"

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of

birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all

purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort

to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his

hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes
were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn

beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have

paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of

mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent

physical exercise," announced Framton, who labored under the tolerably

widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are

hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause

and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he

continued.

"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at

the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention but

not to what Framton was saying.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't

they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look

intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring

out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill

shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in

the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn

towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of

them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his

shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they

neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the

dusk:

"I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat.

A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid

imminent collision.

"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh,

coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who

was that who bolted out as we came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton;

"could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of

goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a

ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he

had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on

the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the

night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and

foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose his nerve."

Romance at short notice was her specialty.

“The Open Window” questions

1. What does Framton think he has seen? What, in fact, has he seen?

2. When does the reader realize that the niece has been lying to

Framton?

3. Why is Framton a particularly good candidate for believing the

niece’s lies?

4. The author repeatedly refers to the niece as “selfpossessed.” What

does this mean?

5. The niece is a good actress, as well as being a good liar. Give two

examples of her convincing acting.

6. A surprise ending is an unexpected twist at the end of a story. Such

an ending is said to be ironic because it is not what the reader

expects. Find clues early in the story that foreshadow the surprise

ending.

7. Irony is the contrast between what is expected and what actually

happens. Dramatic irony results from the reader’s knowing

something that a character does not know. Mrs. Sappleton says that

Mr. Nuttle dashed off so fast “one would think he had seen a ghost.”

Why is this statement an example of dramatic irony?