by E. F. Benson
“I have your permission, I hope?” he said witheringly.
“Certainly, certainly,” said Puffin. “Now get your glass, Major. You’ll feel better in a minute or two.”
Major Flint would have liked to have kept up this magnificent attitude, but the smell of Puffin’s steaming glass beat dignity down, and after glaring at him, he limped back to the cupboard for his whisky bottle. He gave a lamentable cry when he beheld it.
“But I got that bottle in only the day before yesterday,” he shouted, “and there’s hardly a drink left in it.”
“Well, you did yourself pretty well last night,” said Puffin. “Those small glasses of yours, if frequently filled up, empty a bottle quicker than you seem to realize.”
Motives of policy prevented the Major from receiving this with the resentment that was proper to it, and his face cleared. He would get quits over these incessant lemons and lumps of sugar.
“Well, you’ll have to let me borrow from you to-night,” he said genially, as he poured the rest of the contents of his bottle into the glass. “Ah, that’s more the ticket! A glass of whisky a day keeps the doctor away.”
The prospect of sponging on Puffin was most exhilarating, and he put his large slippered feet on to the fender.
“Yes, indeed, that was a highly amusing incident about Miss Mapp’s cupboard,” he said. “And wasn’t Mrs. Plaistow down on her like a knife about it? Our fair friends, you know, have a pretty sharp eye for each other’s little failings. They’ve no sooner finished one squabble than they begin another, the pert little fairies. They can’t sit and enjoy themselves like two old cronies I could tell you of, and feel at peace with all the world.”
He finished his glass at a gulp, and seemed much surprised to find it empty.
“I’ll be borrowing a drop from you, old friend,” he said.
“Help yourself, Major,” said Puffin, with a keen eye as to how much he took.
“Very obliging of you. I feel as if I caught a bit of a chill this afternoon. My wound.”
“Be careful not to inflame it,” said Puffin.
“Thank ye for the warning. It’s this beastly climate that touches it up. A winter in England adds years on to a man’s life unless he takes care of himself. Take care of yourself, old boy. Have some more sugar.”
Before long the Major’s hand was moving slowly and instinctively towards Puffin’s whisky bottle again.
“I reckon that big glass of yours, Puffin,” he said, “holds between three and a half times to four times what my little tumbler holds. Between three and a half and four I should reckon. I may be wrong.”
“Reckoning the water in, I daresay you’re not far out, Major,” said he. “And according to my estimate you mix your drink somewhere about three and a half times to four stronger than I mix mine.”
“Oh, come, come!” said the Major.
“Three and a half to four times, I should say,” repeated Puffin. “You won’t find I’m far out.”
He replenished his big tumbler, and instead of putting the bottle back on the table, absently deposited it on the floor on the far side of his chair. This second tumbler usually marked the most convivial period of the evening, for the first would have healed whatever unhappy discords had marred the harmony of the day, and, those being disposed of, they very contentedly talked through their hats about past prowesses, and took a rosy view of the youth and energy which still beat in their vigorous pulses. They would begin, perhaps, by extolling each other: Puffin, when informed that his friend would be fifty-four next birthday, flatly refused (without offence) to believe it, and, indeed, he was quite right in so doing, because the Major was in reality fifty-six. In turn, Major Flint would say that his friend had the figure of a boy of twenty, which caused Puffin presently to feel a little cramped and to wander negligently in front of the big looking-glass between the windows, and find this compliment much easier to swallow than the Major’s age. For the next half-hour they would chiefly talk about themselves in a pleasant glow of self-satisfaction. Major Flint, looking at the various implements and trophies that adorned the room, would suggest putting a sporting challenge in the Times.
“‘Pon my word, Puffin,” he would say, “I’ve half a mind to do it. Retired Major of His Majesty’s Forces — the King, God bless him!” (and he took a substantial sip); “‘Retired Major, aged fifty-four, challenges any gentleman of fifty years or over.’”
“Forty,” said Puffin sycophantically, as he thought over what he would say about himself when the old man had finished.
“Well, we’ll halve it, we’ll say forty-five, to please you, Puffin — let’s see, where had I got to?— ‘Retired Major challenges any gentleman of forty-five years or over to — to a shooting match in the morning, followed by half a dozen rounds with four-ounce gloves, a game of golf, eighteen holes, in the afternoon, and a billiard match of two hundred up after tea.’ Ha! ha! I shouldn’t feel much anxiety as to the result.”
“My confounded leg!” said Puffin. “But I know a retired captain from His Majesty’s merchant service — the King, God bless him! — aged fifty — —”
“Ho! ho! Fifty, indeed!” said the Major, thinking to himself that a dried-up little man like Puffin might be as old as an Egyptian mummy. Who can tell the age of a kipper?…
“Not a day less, Major. ‘Retired Captain, aged fifty, who’ll take on all comers of forty-two and over, at a steeplechase, round of golf, billiard match, hopping match, gymnastic competition, swinging Indian clubs — —’ No objection, gentlemen? Then carried nem. con.”
This gaseous mood, athletic, amatory or otherwise (the amatory ones were the worst), usually faded slowly, like the light from the setting sun or an exhausted coal in the grate, about the end of Puffin’s second tumbler, and the gentlemen after that were usually somnolent, but occasionally laid the foundation for some disagreement next day, which they were too sleepy to go into now. Major Flint by this time would have had some five small glasses of whisky (equivalent, as he bitterly observed, to one in pre-war days), and as he measured his next with extreme care and a slightly jerky movement, would announce it as being his night-cap, though you would have thought he had plenty of night-caps on already. Puffin correspondingly took a thimbleful more (the thimble apparently belonging to some housewife of Anak), and after another half-hour of sudden single snores and startings awake again, of pipes frequently lit and immediately going out, the guest, still perfectly capable of coherent speech and voluntary motion in the required direction, would stumble across the dark cobbles to his house, and doors would be very carefully closed for fear of attracting the attention of the lady who at this period of the evening was usually known as “Old Mappy.” The two were perfectly well aware of the sympathetic interest that Old Mappy took in all that concerned them, and that she had an eye on their evening séances was evidenced by the frequency with which the corner of her blind in the window of the garden-room was raised between, say, half-past nine and eleven at night. They had often watched with giggles the pencil of light that escaped, obscured at the lower end by the outline of Old Mappy’s head, and occasionally drank to the “Guardian Angel.” Guardian Angel, in answer to direct inquiries, had been told by Major Benjy during the last month that he worked at his diaries on three nights in the week and went to bed early on the others, to the vast improvement of his mental grasp.
“And on Sunday night, dear Major Benjy?” asked Old Mappy in the character of Guardian Angel.
“I don’t think you knew my beloved, my revered mother, Miss Elizabeth,” said Major Benjy. “I spend Sunday evening as —— Well, well.”
The very next Sunday evening Guardian Angel had heard the sound of singing. She could not catch the words, and only fragments of the tune, which reminded her of “The roseate morn hath passed away.” Brimming with emotion, she sang it softly to herself as she undressed, and blamed herself very much for ever having thought that dear Major Benjy —— She peeped out of her window when she had extinguished h
er light, but fortunately the singing had ceased.
To-night, however, the epoch of Puffin’s second big tumbler was not accompanied by harmonious developments. Major Benjy was determined to make the most of this unique opportunity of drinking his friend’s whisky, and whether Puffin put the bottle on the further side of him, or under his chair, or under the table, he came padding round in his slippers and standing near the ambush while he tried to interest his friend in tales of love or tiger-shooting so as to distract his attention. When he mistakenly thought he had done so, he hastily refilled his glass, taking unusually stiff doses for fear of not getting another opportunity, and altogether omitting to ask Puffin’s leave for these maraudings. When this had happened four or five times, Puffin, acting on the instinct of the polar bear who eats her babies for fear that anybody else should get them, surreptitiously poured the rest of his bottle into his glass, and filled it up to the top with hot water, making a mixture of extraordinary power.
Soon after this Major Flint came rambling round the table again. He was not sure whether Puffin had put the bottle by his chair or behind the coal-scuttle, and was quite ignorant of the fact that wherever it was, it was empty. Amorous reminiscences to-night had been the accompaniment to Puffin’s second tumbler.
“Devilish fine woman she was,” he said, “and that was the last that Benjamin Flint ever saw of her. She went up to the hills next morning — —”
“But the last you saw of her just now was on the deck of the P. and O. at Bombay,” objected Puffin. “Or did she go up to the hills on the deck of the P. and O.? Wonderful line!”
“No, sir,” said Benjamin Flint, “that was Helen, la belle Hélène. It was la belle Hélène whom I saw off at the Apollo Bunder. I don’t know if I told you —— By Gad, I’ve kicked the bottle over. No idea you’d put it there. Hope the cork’s in.”
“No harm if it isn’t,” said Puffin, beginning on his third most fiery glass. The strength of it rather astonished him.
“You don’t mean to say it’s empty?” asked Major Flint. “Why just now there was close on a quarter of a bottle left.”
“As much as that?” asked Puffin. “Glad to hear it.”
“Not a drop less. You don’t mean to say —— Well, if you can drink that and can say hippopotamus afterwards, I should put that among your challenges, to men of four hundred and two: I should say forty-two. It’s a fine thing to have a strong head, though if I drank what you’ve got in your glass, I should be tipsy, sir.”
Puffin laughed in his irritating falsetto manner.
“Good thing that it’s in my glass then, and not your glass,” he said. “And lemme tell you, Major, in case you don’t know it, that when I’ve drunk every drop of this and sucked the lemon, you’ll have had far more out of my bottle this evening than I have. My usual twice and — and my usual night-cap, as you say, is what’s my ration, and I’ve had no more than my ration. Eight Bells.”
“And a pretty good ration you’ve got there,” said the baffled Major. “Without your usual twice.”
Puffin was beginning to be aware of that as he swallowed the fiery mixture, but nothing in the world would now have prevented his drinking every single drop of it. It was clear to him, among so much that was dim owing to the wood-smoke, that the Major would miss a good many drives to-morrow morning.
“And whose whisky is it?” he said, gulping down the fiery stuff.
“I know whose it’s going to be,” said the other.
“And I know whose it is now,” retorted Puffin, “and I know whose whisky it is that’s filled you up ti’ as a drum. Tight as a drum,” he repeated very carefully.
Major Flint was conscious of an unusual activity of brain, and, when he spoke, of a sort of congestion and entanglement of words. It pleased him to think that he had drunk so much of somebody’s else whisky, but he felt that he ought to be angry.
“That’s a very unmentionable sor’ of thing to say,” he remarked. “An’ if it wasn’t for the sacred claims of hospitality, I’d make you explain just what you mean by that, and make you eat your words. Pologize, in fact.”
Puffin finished his glass at a gulp, and rose to his feet.
“Pologies be blowed,” he said. “Hittopopamus!”
“And were you addressing that to me?” asked Major Flint with deadly calm.
“Of course, I was. Hippot —— same animal as before. Pleasant old boy. And as for the lemon you lent me, well, I don’t want it any more. Have a suck at it, ole fellow! I don’t want it any more.”
The Major turned purple in the face, made a course for the door like a knight’s move at chess (a long step in one direction and a short one at right angles to the first) and opened it. The door thus served as an aperture from the room and a support to himself. He spoke no word of any sort or kind: his silence spoke for him in a far more dignified manner than he could have managed for himself.
Captain Puffin stood for a moment wreathed in smiles, and fingering the slice of lemon, which he had meant playfully to throw at his friend. But his smile faded, and by some sort of telepathic perception he realized how much more decorous it was to say (or, better, to indicate) good-night in a dignified manner than to throw lemons about. He walked in dots and dashes like a Morse code out of the room, bestowing a naval salute on the Major as he passed. The latter returned it with a military salute and a suppressed hiccup. Not a word passed.
Then Captain Puffin found his hat and coat without much difficulty, and marched out of the house, slamming the door behind him with a bang that echoed down the street and made Miss Mapp dream about a thunderstorm. He let himself into his own house, and bent down before his expired fire, which he tried to blow into life again. This was unsuccessful, and he breathed in a quantity of wood-ash.
He sat down by his table and began to think things out. He told himself that he was not drunk at all, but that he had taken an unusual quantity of whisky, which seemed to produce much the same effect as intoxication. Allowing for that, he was conscious that he was extremely angry about something, and had a firm idea that the Major was very angry too.
“But woz’it all been about?” he vainly asked himself. “Woz’it all been about?”
He was roused from his puzzling over this unanswerable conundrum by the clink of the flap in his letter-box. Either this was the first post in the morning, in which case it was much later than he thought, and wonderfully dark still, or it was the last post at night, in which case it was much earlier than he thought. But, whichever it was, a letter had been slipped into his box, and he brought it in. The gum on the envelope was still wet, which saved trouble in opening it. Inside was a half sheet containing but a few words. This curt epistle ran as follows:
“Sir,
“My seconds will wait on you in the course of to-morrow morning.
“Your faithful obedient servant,
“Benjamin Flint.
Captain Puffin.”
Puffin felt as calm as a tropic night, and as courageous as a captain. Somewhere below his courage and his calm was an appalling sense of misgiving. That he successfully stifled.
“Very proper,” he said aloud. “Qui’ proper. Insults. Blood. Seconds won’t have to wait a second. Better get a good sleep.”
He went up to his room, fell on to his bed and instantly began to snore.
It was still dark when he awoke, but the square of his window was visible against the blackness, and he concluded that though it was not morning yet, it was getting on for morning, which seemed a pity. As he turned over on to his side his hand came in contact with his coat, instead of a sheet, and he became aware that he had all his clothes on. Then, as with a crash of cymbals and the beating of a drum in his brain, the events of the evening before leaped into reality and significance. In a few hours now arrangements would have been made for a deadly encounter. His anger was gone, his whisky was gone, and in particular his courage was gone. He expressed all this compendiously by moaning “Oh, God!”
He struggled
to a sitting position, and lit a match at which he kindled his candle. He looked for his watch beside it, but it was not there. What could have happened — then he remembered that it was in its accustomed place in his waistcoat pocket. A consultation of it followed by holding it to his ear only revealed the fact that it had stopped at half-past five. With the lucidity that was growing brighter in his brain, he concluded that this stoppage was due to the fact that he had not wound it up… It was after half-past five then, but how much later only the Lords of Time knew — Time which bordered so closely on Eternity.
He felt that he had no use whatever for Eternity but that he must not waste Time. Just now, that was far more precious.
From somewhere in the Cosmic Consciousness there came to him a thought, namely, that the first train to London started at half-past six in the morning. It was a slow train, but it got there, and in any case it went away from Tilling. He did not trouble to consider how that thought came to him: the important point was that it had come. Coupled with that was the knowledge that it was now an undiscoverable number of minutes after half-past five.
There was a Gladstone bag under his bed. He had brought it back from the Club-house only yesterday, after that game of golf which had been so full of disturbances and wet stockings, but which now wore the shimmering security of peaceful, tranquil days long past. How little, so he thought to himself, as he began swiftly storing shirts, ties, collars and other useful things into his bag, had he appreciated the sweet amenities of life, its pleasant conversations and companionships, its topped drives, and mushrooms and incalculable incidents. Now they wore a glamour and a preciousness that was bound up with life itself. He starved for more of them, not knowing while they were his how sweet they were.
The house was not yet astir, when ten minutes later he came downstairs with his bag. He left on his sitting-room table, where it would catch the eye of his housemaid, a sheet of paper on which he wrote “Called away” (he shuddered as he traced the words). “Forward no letters. Will communicate…” (Somehow the telegraphic form seemed best to suit the urgency of the situation.) Then very quietly he let himself out of his house.
