Sly, humorous and always at least a little nasty, Saki’s work brings me endless amusement. In this story, the upper-class gentleman visiting his aunt’s country estate for the weekend refuses to take Gabriel at his word when informed both by his guest and by Gabriel himself that there’s a wild beast in the woods and the result is tragic, though conveyed with Saki’s signature vicious wit. The barely suppressed homoeroticism provoked by the naked youth strolling the grounds provides a wealth of salacious counter-readings for the story beyond a mere fable about being cautious of hungry strangers. The comment from Cunningham that “his pose was so suggestive of some wild faun of Pagan myth that I instantly wanted to engage him as a model” is hard to read with a straight face, as was no doubt intended.
First published The Westminster Gazette, 1909 and collected in Reginald in Russia, Methuen & Co, 1910; also in The Complete Short Stories, Penguin Classics, 2000
A Personal Anthology 