When William Came

When William Came

The Project Gutenberg eBook, When William Came, by Saki
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Title: When William Came
Author: Saki
Release Date: December 31, 2004 [eBook #14540]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN
WILLIAM CAME***

Transcribed from the 1914 John Lane edition by David Price,
[email protected]

WHEN WILLIAM CAME

CHAPTER I
: THE SINGING-BIRD AND THE BAROMETER
Cicely Yeovil sat in a low swing chair, alternately looking at herself in
a mirror and at the other occupant of the room in the flesh. Both
prospects gave her undisguised satisfaction. Without being vain she
was duly appreciative of good looks, whether in herself or in another,
and the reflection that she saw in the mirror, and the young man whom
she saw seated at the piano, would have come with credit out of a more
severely critical inspection. Probably she looked longer and with
greater appreciation at the piano player than at her own image; her

good looks were an inherited possession, that had been with her more
or less all her life, while Ronnie Storre was a comparatively new
acquisition, discovered and achieved, so to speak, by her own
enterprise, selected by her own good taste. Fate had given her adorable
eyelashes and an excellent profile. Ronnie was an indulgence she had
bestowed on herself.
Cicely had long ago planned out for herself a complete philosophy of
life, and had resolutely set to work to carry her philosophy into practice.
"When love is over how little of love even the lover understands," she
quoted to herself from one of her favourite poets, and transposed the
saying into "While life is with us how little of life even the materialist
understands." Most people that she knew took endless pains and
precautions to preserve and prolong their lives and keep their powers of
enjoyment unimpaired; few, very few, seemed to make any intelligent
effort at understanding what they really wanted in the way of enjoying
their lives, or to ascertain what were the best means for satisfying those
wants. Fewer still bent their whole energies to the one paramount aim
of getting what they wanted in the fullest possible measure. Her scheme
of life was not a wholly selfish one; no one could understand what she
wanted as well as she did herself, therefore she felt that she was the
best person to pursue her own ends and cater for her own wants. To
have others thinking and acting for one merely meant that one had to be
perpetually grateful for a lot of well-meant and usually unsatisfactory
services. It was like the case of a rich man giving a community a free
library, when probably the community only wanted free fishing or
reduced tram-fares. Cicely studied her own whims and wishes,
experimented in the best method of carrying them into effect, compared
the accumulated results of her experiments, and gradually arrived at a
very clear idea of what she wanted in life, and how best to achieve it.
She was not by disposition a self-centred soul, therefore she did not
make the mistake of supposing that one can live successfully and
gracefully in a crowded world without taking due notice of the other
human elements around one. She was instinctively far more thoughtful
for others than many a person who is genuinely but unseeingly addicted
to unselfishness.
Also she kept in her armoury the weapon which can be so mightily
effective if used sparingly by a really sincere individual--the knowledge

of when to be a humbug. Ambition entered to a certain extent into her
life, and governed it perhaps rather more than she knew. She desired to
escape from the doom of being a nonentity, but the escape would have
to be effected in her own way and in her own time; to be governed by
ambition was only a shade or two better than being governed by
convention.
The drawing-room in which she and Ronnie were sitting was of such
proportions that one hardly knew whether it was intended to be one
room or several, and it had the merit of being moderately cool at two
o'clock on a particularly hot July afternoon. In the coolest of its many
alcoves servants had noiselessly set out an improvised luncheon table: a
tempting array of caviare, crab and mushroom salads, cold asparagus,
slender hock bottles and high-stemmed wine goblets peeped out from
amid a setting of Charlotte Klemm roses.
Cicely rose from her seat and went over to the