The mood of “The Lumber Room” is primarily entertaining and light-hearted. This is a humorous story about a battle of wills between an intelligent, mischievous child and an alarmingly cruel yet ineffectual aunt. While Saki is offering genuine social commentary on the harm that overly punitive adults can cause the children in their care, he is doing so via a satirical and enjoyable tale.
That said, there is a secondary mood in the story that emerges when Nicholas is exploring the “unimagined treasures” in the lumber room. Here, away from the aunt’s hyperbolic malice, Nicholas gets to see, feel, and smell all of the wonders of the furniture and small items that have been locked away for years. A tapestry depicting a hunting scene is of particular interest to him and he imagines all sorts of stories onto the images of a hunter and his hounds looking upon a dying deer while wolves approach from behind. The mood in this scene becomes more reflective and probing.
The final lines of the story combine the story's two moods, leaving readers laughing and contemplating the deeper meaning at the same time:
The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag.
The narrator’s description of the aunt’s “undignified and unmerited detention” is clearly a light-hearted description of someone who has received their just deserts. The mood then switches into a more reflective register as Nicholas ponders if the huntsman in the tapestry might escape from the sticky situation in which he finds himself. Saki intentionally leaves the meaning behind Nicholas’s reflections ambiguous, but it’s clear that this piece of art has fed his imagination and he now has something of substance in his life to focus on, rather than his manipulative aunt’s behavior.
