Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  It all happened just as she anticipated: out of the corner of a dreamy eye she saw Mrs. Oxney enter, and sit down with a long elaborate creak beside the door, but she did not officially see her until she stumbled over a chromatic run. She gave a little start and an exclamation of surprise.

  “Oh, Mrs. Oxney,” she said, “how did you steal in without my noticing? And how wicked of you to creep into the corner and listen to my bunglings! Fingers so naughty and stiff this morning. I could slap the tiresome things for being so stupid. Is it nearly lunch-time? Have you come in to tell me to run upstairs and brush my hair and wash my hands? Must I?”

  “Certainly you needn’t, for you’ve given me such a treat,” said Mrs. Oxney. “I could listen to you playing for ever, Miss Howard. Tiddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-iddle! I call it wonderful without a note to guide you. I wish my fingers were as naughty as that. As for its being lunch-time, why, the gong rang five minutes ago, but I couldn’t punish myself by interrupting you.”

  Miss Howard was perfectly aware that Mrs. Oxney was a musical imbecile, but in spite of that her appreciation gave her strong satisfaction. She was also aware that the gong had sounded five minutes ago, and so she gave another little exclamation of surprise at the astonishing news.

  “Fancy!” she said. “But when I get to the piano I become so stupid and absent-minded. I came in so hungry half an hour ago, hoping it was lunch-time and I declare I’ve no feeling of hunger left now. Music feeds me, I think: even my feeble little strummings are meat and drink to me. Yes: little bits of Chopin. How lovely to have known Chopin! I wish I had known Chopin.”

  “Well, why didn’t you ever ask your mamma to get him to come down to your place in Kent?” asked Mrs. Oxney. “He’d have liked to hear you play, I’ll be bound.”

  Miss Howard gave her silvery little laugh.

  “Dear thing!” she said. “Chopin was a friend of great-grandmamma — let’s see, which was it? — yes, great-grandmamma Stanley. She went to see him at Majorca or Minorca.”

  “I have made a mistake then,” said Mrs. Oxney, “but you’re so good-natured, Miss Howard. And I’ve come to trespass on your good nature, too.”

  “You shan’t be prosecuted,” said Miss Howard gaily. “Trespass away.”

  “Well, it’s this then,” said Mrs. Oxney. “There’s to be an entertainment at the Assembly Rooms next week, and the Committee deputed me to ask you if you wouldn’t play at it. Such a treat it would be, and I’m sure everybody in Bolton would flock to hear you. It’s for a good object too, the Children’s Hospital in the town.”

  “How you all work me!” said Miss Howard, immensely pleased at being asked and beginning to fix on the waste-paper basket. “It’s sheer bullying, for you know I couldn’t refuse to do anything for the dear mites. How I shall have to practice if I’m to be made to play in public!”

  “So much the better for Wentworth,” said Mrs. Oxney. “Then I may tell them that you will? I do call that kind. And what bits will you play? They’d like it best, I’ll be bound, if you played one of your own beautiful improvisations. That would be a thing people couldn’t hear at an ordinary concert, ‘Improvisations by Miss Howard’! And then that wouldn’t call for any practice at all.”

  “Dear thing,” said Miss Howard again. “If you only knew how it takes it out of me. Such dreaming and yet such concentration. But you shall have your way.”

  Meals were served with military punctuality at Wentworth and the pianist and her impresario were very late to Colonel Chase’s high indignation, for if people were late, the service was delayed, and the punctual suffered for the inconsiderateness of the laggard. At breakfast, which, from habits formed in India he called Chota-hazri, unpunctuality did not matter, but tiffin (lunch) was another affair. He was also soured this morning by the fact that the giddy pedometer on his bicycle had got out of order. He had felt super-normally energetic when he went out for his ride and had pedalled away in the most splendid form for nearly three hours, feeling certain that he was breaking his previous record of thirty-five miles and anticipating many congratulations on this athletic feat, which would give so much pleasure to others as well as himself. . . . But, when, on arrival at Wentworth, he had got off his bicycle with rather trembling knees and completely out of breath, to feast his eyes on the disc which would surely register thirty-six miles at least, he found its idiotic hand pointing to the ridiculous figure of nine miles and a quarter. It was most aggravating; he would have to take the wretched instrument to be repaired this afternoon, instead of resting after lunch, and very likely it would not be ready by tomorrow morning so that once more he would not know how far he had been. That would play the deuce with his aggregate for the month which he sedulously entered in a notebook. At one end of it was the record of the miles he had bicycled, and upside down at the other the miles he had walked, and now it would appear that he had only bicycled nine and a quarter miles on October 17th, and perhaps none at all on October 18th.

  These depressing reflections, combined with Miss Howard’s unpunctuality, caused him to utter a mere grunt to her salutation as she tripped by his table with all the grapes in her hat wagging, and sat down at her own table in the window where she could see the church tower, and feed the sweet birdies with crumbs when she had fed herself.

  “And how many miles did you go this morning, Colonel?” she asked as she unfolded her napkin. Interest in his prowess always pleased him, and of course she did not know how wicked the pedometer had been.

  “Most aggravating!” he said. “That wretched instrument of mine got out of order, and after nearly three hours of the hardest riding I’ve ever done, it registered nine miles and a quarter.”

  There was a general murmur of sympathy with him and of indignation with the pedometer. Unfortunately Mrs. Holders tried to say something amusing: she could not have done anything more dangerous. Reckless in fact: highly culpable.

  “Nine and a quarter miles in under three hours?” she said. “I should call that very good going. I’ve often been less.”

  That was like an application of the bellows to Colonel Chase’s smouldering wrath. If there was one subject which must be treated with deference and respect it was his bicycling, and he burst into flame.

  “Considerably less I should think, ma’am,” he said. “Waitress, I said bread and butter pudding half an hour ago, and I don’t see why I should be kept waiting till tea-time because others don’t come in to lunch.”

  “He’s gone off into one of his tantrums,” whispered Mrs. Oxney to her sister. “Run into the kitchen, Amy, and bring it yourself and a nice jug of cream with it.”

  Miss Howard was grieved at this piece of rudeness. Howards never behaved like that. Such a peppery old thing: as if anybody cared how many miles he went on his bicycle. Sometimes she wished he would ride away for hundreds of miles in a straight line and never come back. And then sometimes she thought that if he had only a clever young wife to look after him, she would soon cure him of his roughnesses. So she put her nose slightly in the air, and ate curried chicken with great elegance in a spoon, which Colonel Chase said was the right way to eat curry.

  The nice jug of cream had a mollifying effect, and when Miss Howard came out from her lunch, Colonel Chase was explaining to a sycophantic audience where he had gone, and it was unanimously decided that he must have ridden at least thirty-eight miles, which was indeed joyful. He decided in consequence to forgive Miss Howard for being late for lunch, and to show the plenitude of his magnanimity, he strolled across to the chimney-piece to admire Evening Bells.

  “I’ll enter it as thirty-eight miles then in my logbook,” he said, “if you all insist on it. Why there’s another of your sketches, Miss Howard, though I think I’ve seen it before. Very pretty, I’m sure. What’s that written underneath it? The mellow lanoline—”

  Miss Howard was also ready to forgive, and gave a laughing peal of bells on her own account.

  “How can you be so naughty?” she said. “The mellow lin-lan-l
one, Colonel. Tennyson you know. Such a sweet poem. I shall have to find it for you.”

  “I declare I can hear the bells,” said Miss Kemp, shamelessly plagiarising from Mrs. Oxney. “Delicious, Miss Howard. So poetical.”

  Her father who had been examining the sketch from a purely hygienic point of view, shook his head.

  “I shouldn’t like to go to evening service in that church,” he said. “All among the trees, you know, with the river close by. I should wake up with a bad attack of lumbago next morning, I’m afraid. Churches are draughty places at the best of times, and if you walk there you’re liable to get heated and then have to sit for an hour in the cold, while if you drive there, as like as not you’ve got chilly already and that’s even worse. I shan’t ever forget the chill I got in church at Harrogate. It was a damp morning, and I should have been wiser not to go. I declare it makes me shiver to look at that church of Miss Howard’s so close to the river. I might manage morning service there, but it would be very ill-advised to go in the evening.”

  Colonel Chase had finished the coffee which Mrs. Oxney had sent him as a propitiation. It had arrived with her compliments, for coffee after lunch was an extra.

  “Well, I must get down to the town to have my pedometer looked to,” he said, “and then how about a few holes at golf, Miss Howard? I’ll be back in twenty minutes. That’ll make a pretty good day’s exercise for me.”

  “Marvellous!” said Miss Howard.

  “But nothing to what I used to do not so many years back in India,” he said. “Military duties, parades and what not in the morning, and a polo-match after tiffin, and perhaps a game of rackets after tea, and a couple of hundred at billiards before I got to my bridge. That’s the way to keep fit, and get good news from your liver if the ladies will excuse the expression.”

  Mrs. Holders was not so forgiving as Miss Howard. She waited till he had passed the window pedalling hard with his chest well out, and then gave her mouse-squeak of laughter.

  “And it’s early closing,” she said. “He’ll come tiffining back and serve him right for being rude to me. I can’t stand rudeness.”

  Mrs. Oxney who had joined the group round Evening Bells wrung her hands in dismay.

  “Oh, what have you done, Mrs. Holders?” she said. “I am sorry. That beautiful hot coffee which I sent the Colonel, why, I might as well never have sent it at all, so vexed he’ll be to find it’s early closing. And then, if he’s not too much upset to play golf, he’ll see that I’ve had his favourite tree cut down, and it’s fallen right across the green in the middle of the field, and that’ll be another cause for vexation. I must send the gardeners to see if they can’t haul it away before he gets back. Dear me, what a day of misfortunes!”

  “And little better than touchwood when all’s said and done,” moaned Mrs. Bertram.

  So the two sisters who usually joined the guests in the lounge after lunch for a friendly chat, cut this short, and the one hurried away to despatch gardeners to the scene of the disaster in hopes of clearing it before the Colonel came back from his futile errand to the town, and the other to order hot scones for tea, of which he was inordinately fond. Though dirty weather might be anticipated, Mrs. Holders was quite impenitent, and kept bursting into little squeals of merriment.

  “Serve him right, serve him right,” she repeated. “He was rude to me, and that’s what he gets for it. If those are army manners, give me the Navy.”

  This was a revolutionary utterance: the red flag seemed to flutter. Colonel Chase had hitherto been regarded at Wentworth as something cosmic, like a thunderstorm or a fine day. You could dislike or be frightened of the thunderstorm, and hide in a dark place till its fury was past, or you could enjoy the fine day, but you had to accept whichever it might happen to be. He was stuffy on the thunderstorm days and sunny on the others, and you must take the weather as it came.

  “Here we all are,” continued the rebel, “and we’ve got to be pleasant to each other, and not fly into passions or behave like kings and emperors, however long we’ve spent in India, and however many tigers and tiffins we have shot. For my part, I never believed much in his story of the tiger which charged him, and which he shot through the heart when it was two yards away. I’m sure I wish evil to nobody, but I shouldn’t have minded if the tiger had given him a good nip first, to teach him manners. And why he should have jugs of cream at lunch and hot scones for tea because he lost his temper I don’t know. Skim-milk and a bit of dry bread would have been more suitable.”

  These awful remarks were addressed to Tim Bullingdon only, for the sisters had gone to avert the wrath to come, Miss Howard had taken the soupy twilight-sketch to the tap, and Florence Kemp had gone out with her father to the chairs under the cedar, where she read aloud to him till he went to sleep.

  “I wouldn’t have been in his regiment for anything,” said Tim, cake-walking about the lounge, for gentle exercise though painful was recommended. “I would sooner have been in hell.”

  “So would I,” said Mrs. Holders cordially, “and thought it very agreeable in comparison. By the way, there’s an envelope on the writing-table in the smoking-room addressed to his Excellency the Viceroy. That’s meant for us to see. Have you seen it?”

  “Good Lord, yes,” said Tim. “It’s been there since yesterday morning. I put it in the waste-paper basket once, but it’s back again and getting quite dusty. If it’s there tomorrow morning, I shall address another envelope to King George, Personal.”

  Mrs. Holders squeaked again.

  “That would be a beauty for him,” she said. “Mind you do it. Here he is back from the town coming up the drive. What a red face!”

  Colonel Chase banged the front door and came puffing in to the lounge.

  “Pretty state of things,” he said. “It seems a perpetual holiday for the working classes. That’s what makes them out of hand. Early closing to-day, and late opening tomorrow, I shouldn’t wonder, and then comes Sunday, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it was a Bank-holiday on Monday.”

  “Dear me!” said Mrs Holders. “Then you’ve had your ride for nothing. What a disappointment. Never mind, get a good game of golf.”

  Colonel Chase flung himself into a chair, and mopped his face.

  “And no sign of Miss Howard,” he said. “I told her I should be back in twenty minutes. Women have no idea of time. Qui-hi, Miss Howard.”

  “I expect that’s Hindustanee,” said Mrs. Holders. “What a pleasure to talk so many languages. Parlez-vous Français, monsieur?”

  Colonel Chase had again that horrid sense of uncertainty as to whether Mrs. Holders was not in some obstruse manner poking fun at him, but, as usual, the notion seemed incredible. Then snatches of song were heard from the landing at the top of the stairs, and Miss Howard came tripping along it. The tap-water had done wonders for the viscous fog, and she looked forward to making a success of her sketch after all. It was to be called ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’. She carried her bag of golf clubs with her and was quite ready.

  The two went out together through the garden to the golf-field. A perfect swarm of gardeners and odd men and chauffeurs and boot-boys were busy hauling the touchwood tree from the middle green.

  “Why, what’s all this?” said Colonel Chase, stopping short. “My tree, my hazard, my bunker, my favourite hazard. Cut down! Upon my word now! I wonder by whose orders that was done. Ah, there’s Mrs. Oxney. What’s all this, Mrs. Oxney?”

  Mrs. Oxney came forward like Esther before Ahasuerus.

  “Oh, dear me, such a sad accident, Colonel,” she said, “though it will be all right in a few minutes now. The tree fell right across the green. So clumsy! But they’ve got it moving. I had to have it cut down: all gone at the root and so dangerous. What should I have felt if it had come crashing down when you were in the middle of one of your beautiful puttings?”

  This was an improvisation as brilliant as Miss Howard’s on the piano, and far less rehearsed. But it gave little satisfac
tion.

  “Well, you’ve removed the only decent hazard in the place,” he said. “I’m sorry it has happened for I’ve been toiling all the summer to get a few sporting holes for you. I should have thought you might have had it propped up or something of the sort. No matter. Take the honour, Miss Howard, and let’s be off, or it will be dark before we’ve played our twenty holes.”

  CHAPTER II

  This inauspicious afternoon finished better than might have been anticipated. The Colonel’s favourite hazard, it is true, was laid low, but the trunk now dragged to the edge of the green, was discovered to be a very well-placed bunker, when Miss Howard put the ball underneath it in an unplayable position, and thus enabled Colonel Chase to win the match. Then it was found that Mrs. Oxney’s chauffeur who was an ingenious mechanic could put the pedometer to rights with the greatest ease. (He geared it a shade too high, so that for the future when Colonel Chase had ridden seven-eights of a mile it recorded a full mile, and so ever afterwards when he rode thirty-two miles, as he so often did, he could inform admiring Wentworth with indisputable evidence to back him, that he had ridden thirty-six. A pleasing spell of record-breaking ensued.)

  After a quantity of hot scones for tea, he retired to his bedroom according to his usual custom for a couple of hours of solid reading before dinner. He took from a small book-shelf above his bed, which contained for the most part old Army lists, an antique copy of Macaulay’s Essays which he had won as a prize for Geography at school, and before settling down to read made himself very comfortable in a large armchair with his pipe and tobacco handy. Then he glanced at the news in the evening paper, which for many months now had put him in a towering passion since it so largely concerned the coal strike. All strikers, according to his firm conviction, were damned lazy skunks, who refused to do a stroke of work, because they preferred to be supported in idle luxury by the dole, while Mr. Cook was a Bolshevist, whom Colonel Chase, so he repeatedly affirmed, would have rejoiced to hang with his own hands, having heartily flogged him first. There would soon have been an end of the strike if the weak-kneed Government had only done what he had recommended from the very beginning. Then, in order to quiet and calm his mind he mused over a cross-word puzzle, jotting down in pencil the solutions which seemed to fit. Half an hour generally sufficed to break the back of it, and then he leaned back in his chair, opened Macaulay’s Essays at random, and gave himself up to meditation.