The Open Door

by Saki


"My aunt will be downstairs in a minute, Mr. Nuttell," said a very self-confident young lady of fifteen; "Till then, you must put up with me."

Mr. Nuttell tried to say the right thing about being very happy to meet the girl and having the chance to talk to her. Actually, he doubted that these visits to total strangers would help the medical difficulty with his nerves, which he had travelled here to cure.

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was about to travel to the quiet of the countryside. "You’ll hide and not speak to anyone and your nerves will get worse because you’ll be lonely. I’ll just give you some letters to introduce you to everyone I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

"Do you know many people here?" asked the girl, when she thought there had been enough silence.

"Nobody," said Mr. Nuttell. "My sister stayed four years ago and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

"Then you know almost nothing about my aunt?" asked the self-confident young lady.

"Only her name and address," agreed the visitor. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was married or widowed. Something about the room suggested men lived in this house.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child. "That is since your sister left here."

"Her tragedy?" asked Mr. Nuttell. Somehow in this restful place, tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that door open on an October afternoon," said the niece, pointing to a large glass door that opened on to the garden.

"It’s quite warm for the time of the year," said Mr. Nuttell. "But has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"

"Through that door, three years ago exactly, her husband and two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. While they were crossing the fields to their favourite place for shooting, all three of them were drowned. There had been that terrible wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years were extremely dangerous. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-confidence and became very human.

"Poor aunt always thinks that they’ll come back someday, they and the little brown dog that was lost with them, and walk through that door just as they used to. That’s why the door is kept open every day until evening. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing the song 'Bertie' as he always did to tease her, because she hated it. Do you know, sometimes on quiet evenings like this, I almost get a strange feeling that they will all walk in through that door..."

She stopped talking with a little shudder. It was a relief to Mr. Nuttell when the aunt hurried into the room, saying sorry for being late.

"I hope Vera has been talking to you?" she said.

"She’s been very interesting," said Nuttell.

"I hope you don't mind the open door," said Mrs. Sappleton. "My husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting and they always come in this way. They've been out today, so they'll make my poor carpets very dirty. Typical men!"

She chatted happily about the shooting and the birds in the winter. To Mr. Nuttell it was absolutely horrible. He tried to change the subject; but he was aware that his hostess was giving him only a part of her attention, and her eyes were constantly looking past him to the open door and the garden. It was certainly unfortunate that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

"The doctors agree that I need complete rest, no mental excitement and no energetic physical exercise," said Mr. Nuttell, who wrongly believed that total strangers were hungry for the smallest detail of his nervous condition. "However, they cannot agree on my diet," he continued.

"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, as she stopped a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly showed great attention – but not to what Mr. Nuttell was saying.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and they look extremely muddy!"

Mr. Nuttell shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look to show sympathetic understanding. The child was staring out through the open window with horror in her eyes. Mr. Nuttell turned round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the evening light, three men were walking across the garden towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them had a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown dog kept close to them. Noiselessly they neared the house and then a young voice sang out of the darkness: "Bertie."

Mr. Nuttell grabbed his hat. He hardly noticed the hall door and the front gate as he ran to the road. A cyclist had to stop very suddenly not to crash into him.

"Here we are, my dear," said the man with the white coat, coming in through the door. "Fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who ran out as we came up?"

"A very strange man, called Mr. Nuttell," said Mrs. Sappleton; "He could only talk about his illness, and hurried off without a word of goodbye when you arrived. You’d think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the dog," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a graveyard somewhere on an Indian river by a large group of dogs, and had to spend the night in a new grave with the animals mad with anger just above him. It’s enough to make anyone nervous."