PAYING GUESTS. E. F. Benson
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-lone, 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.