Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I did,” said Mrs. Holders, “And I pass.”

  “No bid, then, is what you should say. I must consider: a difficult problem. I shall declare two hearts, partner. Two, mind: let’s have no underbidding. You can trust me for having a sound reason when I say two hearts instead of one.”

  “Fancy! Two hearts straight off,” said Mrs. Oxney. “I should never dare to do such a thing. I can do nothing against such a declaration.”

  “No, I expect you’ll find yourselves in the Potarge this time,” said Colonel Chase. “No bid then: well, partner?”

  Now Miss Kemp had got into terrible trouble last night for taking Colonel Chase out of a major suit into a minor suit, and so though she only held two microscopic hearts, but an immense tiara of diamonds, she also passed, but Mrs. Holders without a moment’s hesitation was daring enough to double. This almost amounted to an impertinence, and the Colonel drew himself up as if insulted: he was not accustomed to have his declaration doubled. He stared at her for a withering moment and she saw red.

  “Very well, I’ve nothing more to say,” he said. “I pass.”

  “You should say ‘no bid’ Colonel,” remarked Mrs. Holders.

  Colonel Chase was a very fair-minded man, when it was not reasonably possible to be otherwise.

  “So I should, so I should,” he said. “Peccavi! And I trust I am not too old to learn. No bid, all round is it? And a club led by Mrs. Oxney. So let’s have a look at your hand, partner. Ha, six fine diamonds! Potarge indeed. Let’s get to work, and discuss our short-comings afterwards. I find it a little difficult to concentrate with so much agreeable conversation going on. A club! I’ll play the queen from your hand. Some do, some don’t, but I have always maintained it is the correct play.”

  A perfect whirlwind of disaster descended upon the unfortunate man. The queen of clubs was taken by Mrs. Holders’s king, who returned it and Mrs. Oxney took it with her ace. She then pulled out a small diamond by mistake, and pleasantly found that Mrs. Holders had got none. Mrs. Holders trumped it, and led a third club. This established a very jolly cross-ruff, for wicked Mrs. Oxney had opened clubs from an ace and a small one.

  “Never saw such luck,” said Colonel Chase, as small trumps on each side of him secured tricks with monotonous regularity. “I can’t think why you didn’t take me out with two diamonds, partner.”

  “Because she would have required three,” said Mrs. Holders.

  “Indeed! Well, that would have been cheaper than letting my two hearts stand. Ha! Now we’ll make an end of this.”

  He trumped one of these wretched little clubs with the king: Mrs. Oxney, with many apologies overtrumped with the ace.

  “I never saw such bad luck, Colonel,” she said. “Everything against you. Too bad! Of course it looked as if Mrs. Holders held the ace.”

  “I should think so indeed, considering she doubled me,” said the Colonel. “I can’t think what you doubled me on, Mrs. Holders. The rest I imagine are mine. Let’s see. I declared two hearts I believe. Then we’re four down. Somewhat expensive, partner, when we should have had the game if you had only declared diamonds. Well, well: we all have to pay for our experience.”

  “I doubled you on an excellent hand,” said Mrs. Holders. “And I can’t think why you declared two hearts.”

  Colonel Chase again stared at her. She had dared to double his declaration, she had dared to justify it, and now she dared to question his declaration. The only thing to do was to answer her quite calmly.

  “Two hearts was undoubtedly the right declaration,” he said. “I fancy that among experts there would be little difference of opinion about that, nor indeed about my view of what my partner should have done. I wager that if we sent out hands up to Slam or Pons, I should get my verdict.”

  “Oh, that would be interesting,” said Mrs. Oxney. “Let us do that. How exciting to see our game of bridge at Wentworth all printed in the Sunday paper. I’m sure they would say that it was very bad luck on the Colonel and that he played it all quite beautifully.”

  The suggestion was adopted and Mrs. Holders noted down the reconstructed hands. Colonel Chase did not seem very enthusiastic about it, though he had originated the idea, and thought it very unlikely that Slam would give his opinion on so obvious a question.

  This rubber came to an immediate and sensational end, for Colonel Chase naturally anxious to get back on Mrs. Holders’s unjustifiable (though justified) double, returned the compliment next hand and thus gave his adversaries the rubber. There was indeed an air of defiance about that lady to-night, she was in a state of rebellion from established authority, and she made this even more painfully apparent by challenging his addition, and incontestably proving that he was wrong. This made Mrs. Oxney, though thereby she gained threepence more, quite uncomfortable; the Colonel’s arithmetic and his law-giving had both been called in question, and it was as if Moses, coming down from Sinai with the tables of commandments had been subjected to cross-examination as to their authenticity and the number of them. Moses would not have liked that, nor did Colonel Chase, and it was lucky, in Mrs. Oxney’s opinion, that he opened the next rubber with a grand slam, for that smoothed down the frayed edges of his temper, and he explained very carefully the brilliance and difficulty of his achievement.

  “An interesting hand,” he said, “and it required a bit of playing, if I may say so. That eight of spades, partner: that might have been a nasty card for us. Lucky — at least there wasn’t much luck about it, only a little calculation — that I trumped it from my dummy. Some people might have discarded a diamond but I’m too old a bird to go after will-o’-the-wisps like that. The other was the correct game: played like that there wasn’t another trick to be made anywhere!”

  He was still a little dignified with Mrs. Holders for having dared to double him and to add up the sum right, and turned to her.

  “Or can you suggest any plan by which I could have got another trick?” he said.

  Mrs. Holders gave a little squeal.

  “Not possibly,” she said. “You got all the tricks there were.”

  “Ah, yes. Grand slam, so it was,” said he. “Amusing that I should have asked you if any more tricks were to be secured!”

  “Very,” said Mrs. Holders. “Most.”

  Play suddenly became slightly hectic. Even Miss Kemp who never bid against no-trumps because, if anybody had got such a good hand as that it was no use fighting against it, developed unusual aggressiveness, and Mrs. Oxney was penalised again and again for supporting her partner’s declarations without anything to support them with. The scores above the line went on mounting and mounting and even Colonel Chase got silent and preoccupied as he vainly tried to calculate how many threepences were involved on one side or the other.

  Every now and then he broke into hectoring instruction, but somehow with the rebellious Mrs. Holders on his right, who gave little acid smiles and elevations of her eyebrows, when he told her what she ought to have played or discarded or declared, and made no reply of any sort, he felt like an autocrat in the presence of some ominously silent mob; while the congratulations of Mrs. Oxney, who just now was his partner, if he fulfilled his contract, and her sympathy with his ill luck if he miserably failed, was only like the assurances of the old régime, that all was well with the Czardom. He was not at all sure that all was well; he felt tremors pervading his throne: there was a cold devilish purpose about Mrs. Holders when she outbid him, which was much like the edge of the assassin’s knife. There was a patient deadliness about her, when, having failed in her design, she ambushed herself for his further declaration, that really unnerved him. Usually she succeeded in drawing him into an impossible declaration, and when she failed, owing to his surrender, and she was penalised herself, she remained quite unmoved, and instead of finding fault with somebody else, cheerfully entered two or three hundred against her own score.

  Bridge generally finished about ten o’clock, for Wentworth with its freight of invalids, was early to bed
, but now half-past ten had struck and still this truculent rubber went on.

  “Upon my word, most interesting,” said Colonel Chase, as, with slightly trembling fingers, he shuffled the cards for the next and fifteenth hand. “You let us off there, Mrs. Holders: if you had led out trumps, as I’ve often advised you to do, you would have caught my queen—”

  “So she would,” said Mrs. Oxney admiringly. “You see everything, Colonel.”

  “ — and then you would have cleared your diamonds, and it would have been we who were in the Potarge, instead of you. Funny how a little slip like that sticks to one through the rest of—”

  “Five no trumps,” said Mrs. Holders, after considering her hand for about two seconds.

  Colonel Chase could not command his voice at once. But at the second attempt he mastered it.

  “Come, come,” he said. “You want to keep me up all night. I’ve never heard anybody—”

  “Five no trumps,” said Mrs. Holders with extraordinary distinctness.

  Colonel Chase sorted his hand, and found a richness. There was a brilliant array of seven diamonds lacking the king; there were the king and queen of hearts, there was the king of spades by himself, and he thought that with so splendid a hand, this was a wonderful opportunity to give the rebellious woman a good lesson, and establish himself for ever on his rightful throne. He doubled and Mrs. Holders redoubled.

  At that, the jovial laugh to the accompaniment of which Colonel Chase was preparing to say to his partner that there was Potarge for two, died in his throat, though he was far from realising that Nemesis, who no doubt had been patiently listening to his lectures on bridge for the last month or two, was licking her hungry lips. He put down his cigarette, and led the ace of diamonds. Miss Kemp displayed her hand. It contained the ace and queen of spades, the king of diamonds with an infinitesimal satellite, three clubs, including the knave, and nothing else of the slightest importance.

  Mrs. Holders gave that annoying little squeal of laughter that grated on Colonel Chase’s nerves, and discarded a small heart on his noble ace of diamonds. Somehow that made him feel much better. Little he knew that he was destined to be much worse. But at present he felt better.

  “That’s the danger of declaring no trumps with a suit missing, Mrs. Holders,” he said. “I’ve fallen into that trap before now myself. Let me see: five I think.”

  He jovially slapped the trick down.

  “One more trick, partner,” he said, “and then the fun begins.”

  “That was a beautiful double of yours,” said Mrs. Oxney. “Wonderful!”

  “Not so bad; not so bad,” said he. “I’m a highwayman this time, Mrs. Holders, exacting penalties for your rashness in going unguarded.”

  “Quite,” said Mrs. Holders, in a terrible voice.

  “Well, I’ll just clear that king of diamonds out of the way,” said Colonel Chase, “and then we’ll settle down and be comfortable.”

  He cleared the king out of the way, and by way of retaliation Mrs. Holders cleared his king of spades out of the way with dummy’s ace and continued with the queen of the same suit. Colonel Chase having no more, and being constitutionally unable to part with one of those winning diamonds threw out a small club. Anything would do.

  The Colonel’s jaw might have been observed by any careful bystander to drop about half an inch the moment he had done so. He saw that he had left his queen of clubs with only one guard. Perhaps he had settled down to be comfortable, but nobody could possibly have guessed that. Mrs. Holders then led the knave of clubs from her partner’s hand, Mrs. Oxney played something of extreme insignificance, and then Mrs. Holders sat and thought. She pulled a card out of her hand, and held it poised. She put it back. She pulled out another card and played the king of clubs. The Colonel played a small one.

  Colonel Chase began to perspire.

  Mrs. Holders pulled out a card again and put it back. A most annoying habit. Then she pulled it out again and played it. It was the ace of clubs. Colonel Chase put on the queen (it couldn’t be helped), and Mrs. Oxney discarded something pathetically unimportant in another suit.

  “What? No more clubs?” said Colonel Chase in a voice of intense indignation.

  “No, I wish I had,” said poor Mrs. Oxney. “Isn’t it bad luck? And I’ve got such a quantity of — oh, I suppose I mustn’t say what.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Mrs. Holders, who thereupon played out the ace of hearts, and followed it with processions of winning clubs and winning spades.

  Colonel Chase said “Pshaw!” Cataracts of diamonds had been spouting from his hand, and rivers of hearts from his partner’s.

  “But don’t we get any more?” said Mrs. Oxney. “All my beautiful hearts and all your beautiful diamonds?”

  “Fifty for little slam,” said Mrs. Holders quite calmly, though her eyebrows had almost disappeared, “and thirty for aces. Then two hundred for my contract, doubled and redoubled, and two hundred more for the extra trick, and below six times two hundred. I think that’s all. Dear me!”

  This was intolerable.

  “Not bridge at all,” said Colonel Chase. “With not a single diamond in your hand, and spades headed by the knave. Madness! I would have doubled on my hand every time.”

  Mrs. Holders knew all that perfectly well. She knew also, (and knew that Colonel Chase knew) that if he had not unguarded his queen of clubs. . . . But then he had, and she went on adding up.

  “And two is seven,” she said, “and eight is fifteen, and six is twenty-one, and seven is twenty-eight, and seven is thirty-five, and six is forty-one and carry four, and two and three and five is fourteen and four is eighteen—”

  “Yes, I make that,” said Miss Kemp, licking her pencil, “and oh, just look at the hundreds!”

  After they had sufficiently looked at the hundreds, the general reckoning disclosed that Colonel Chase had to pay everybody all round, and he disbursed sums varying from threepence to Mrs. Oxney up to the staggering figure of three and ninepence due to Miss Kemp. All the evenings on which everybody had paid to him were forgotten in general commiseration and nobody dreamed of consoling him with the encouragement he often administered to others, and told him that his game was improving so much that very likely he would soon win it all back again. Mrs. Oxney could scarcely be induced to accept her threepence, and she had to steel herself to the sacrifice by the glad hope that she would lose ten times that sum to him tomorrow. On other nights Colonel Chase usually stood for a long time in front of the fire-place when the rubbers were over, richly rattling coppers in his trousers’ pocket, and giving them a few hints about declarations to take up to bed, but now there was no chink of bullion to endorse his wisdom, and he made as short work of his glass of whiskey and water (called ‘grog’ or ‘nightcap’) as he had made of the cross-word, and left the victors on the field of battle. Miss Kemp gave him time to get upstairs, in order to avoid the indelicacy of seeing a gentleman open his bedroom door, and perhaps disclose pyjamas warming by the fire, and then followed him in some haste, since her father (there was no indelicacy about that) always expected her to come and talk to him, when he had got to bed, about his evening symptoms, or read to him till he felt sleepy. She knew she was unusually late to-night, and it was possible that he had punished her by already putting out his light. This pathetic proceeding, he was sure, wrung her with agonies of remorse.

  No such severity had been inflicted to-night; he was sitting up in bed with a book in front of him; and a fur tippet belonging to Florence round his neck for the protection of the glands of the throat. On the table beside him was the thermos flask filled with hot milk, in case he felt un-nourished during the night, the glass jug of lemonade made with saccharine instead of sugar in case he felt thirsty, and the clock with the luminous hands.

  “I am late, Papa, I’m afraid,” she said. “We had a most exciting rubber which would not come to an end.”

  His face wore its most martyred expression: he glanced at the clock which sho
wed the unprecedented hour of eleven.

  “Surely my clock is fast,” he said.

  “No; it is eleven,” she said. “Shall I read to you?”

  “Far too late: far, far too late. I shall be good for nothing in the morning as it is.”

  “You would like to go to sleep then?” she asked. “Shall I put out your light?”

  “Indeed, I should very much like to go to sleep,” he said, “but it is already long past my usual hour for going to sleep, and as you know, if I am not asleep by eleven, I often lie awake half the night. No doubt you were absorbed in your game, and could not spare a thought to me. Very natural. Two hours bridge! I was wrong to expect that perhaps it would occur to you — but no matter.”

  “Would you like me to talk to you then, if you don’t feel you’ll go to sleep?” she asked.

  “Perhaps a little talk might compose me,” said he, “if you can spare me ten minutes. I am very tired to-night, and that makes me wakeful. I have had a great deal to do. My thermos flask was unfilled, and I had to ring. There were no rusks in my little tin and I had to get out the big tin and fill it. My clock was not wound.”

  Florence sat down by his bed. Her chair grated on the margin of boards as she pulled it forward, and he winced.

  “You’ve got everything now, haven’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes. I saw to everything myself. Talk to me, please. Yes?”

  “I won three and ninepence,” said Florence. “Colonel Chase lost to everybody.”

  “I heard him thumping by just now,” said her father. “I supposed he had lost, for he banged his door. I was just beginning to get sleepy. A want of consideration, perhaps. Yes?”

  At each interrogative ‘yes’, as Florence knew, a fresh topic of interest had to be furnished.

  “Mrs. Oxney won threepence,” she said.

  “I am glad. Perhaps she will be able to afford me hot water in my bottle to-morrow. It was tepid tonight. I think you have told me enough about your game of bridge. Yes?”

  “Miss Howard is playing at an entertainment in the assembly rooms next week.”