An Invited Guest
John
Tures
Lady Nancy screamed as a
creature slid down a
thread from the ceiling.
“Winston!” she
exclaimed, catching her breath.
“It’s….a spider!”
“Ah yes,” her
husband acknowledged from behind
the London Times, sitting in his overstuffed chair in the drawing room.
Nancy waved her hands in
front of her chest,
hoping to ward off a dramatic swoon. “You really should roll up your newspaper
and save me by giving this dangerous insect a good smacking.”
Puffs of pipe smoke rose
above the pages. “He’s
an arachnid, and that would be rude to smash him. After all, I accept his
presence, Nancy.”
His wife gasped. “You….”
Sir Winston interrupted
her. “Yes, he’s my
invited guest now.”
Nancy remained defiant.
“Insect or arachnid,
it’s a deadly creature that could probably kill us with a single bite.”
“Nonsense, my dear,”
he harrumphed, remaining
shielded by the day’s news. “The only ones with any sort of lethality can be
found in America and Australia.”
“But…he’ll
make sticky webs!”
“Ah, yes, my lovely.
I’m rather counting on
it.”
Nancy nearly spilled tea
from her China cup.
“But…why?”
Winston put down the London
Times. “Darling,
you remember the Nevilles?”
She nodded.
Winston twirled his handlebar
mustache. “Well,
they have had a rather nasty infestation of ants. It’s the reason why they
haven’t had their Spring soiree.”
“I was beginning to
wonder,” she admitted.
Winston continued his lecture.
“It’s the same
with the Effinghams. They’ve tried poisons, traps, all to no avail. Being an
educated man, I thought I would peruse the latest scientific journals for a
solution. A French Biologist named D’Estaing speculated that natural predators
would be the best at killing agrarian pests. I then considered what would hunt
ants. Spiders were the simple solution.”
Nancy seemed unconvinced.
“But what shall we do
when it is time for our own festivity next month?”
Winston tapped his skull
knowingly. “The
servants shall remove the webs, along with their cocooned victims, beforehand.
When the last of the human guests have departed, our invited guests shall
return to protect our castle against the tiny invaders.”
Nancy bit her lip. Though
she detested the
sight of spiders, the thought of those beastly ants ruining this year’s ball
was even worse. Silence became her reluctant assent to her husband’s scheme as
she considered the spiders on the walls. He resumed reading his newspaper.
At that moment, one of her
husband’s invited
guests emerged from underneath the sofa, crawling ominously toward her feet.
She gasped, desperately attempting to pull her legs to safety in her chair
without exposing her ankles under the hem of her dress, a serious faux pas
should any servant enter the room.
She made her special clicking
sound, summoning
her protector. Then Ilsa, her cat, flew from her side table and landed upon the
eight-legged creature, the blow strong enough to kill the spider.
Winston peered over the
Times in horror. “What
the devil?!”
Nancy
smirked. “Just following your wisdom,
dear husband, and summoning my own invited guest.”
