The Open Window by Saki is the short story of Vera, “a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen” who, using her vivid imagination, plays a prank on Frampton Nuttel, a man undergoing a “nerve cure.”
New in town and with no knowledge of the histories of the families he is about to visit, Frampton Nuttel finds out from Vera the tragic story of Mrs Sappleton: “Out through that window [French 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.” But, apparently, Frampton finds out from Vera that Mrs Sappleton “thinks that they will come back some day, 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.”
To his shock, Frampton soon sees “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 shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.” Thinking they are ghost, Frampton rushes out of the house without even saying good-bye.
What is Vera’s explanation for his strange behaviour rests for the readers to find out by themselves. “Romance at short notice was her speciality.”
Saki (Hecor Hugh Munro) was a British novelist and short story writer. He was born in Burma in 1870 and killed in France in 1916.
