PAYING GUESTS. E. F. Benson
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 satisfaction.
"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.
This meditation was always agreeable, for its origin, the cave out of which it so generously gushed was his strong and profound satisfaction with himself, and this gave a pleasant flavour to whatever he thought about. He had had a thoroughly creditable though uneventful career in the army, and on his retirement two years ago, found himself able to contemplate the past and await the future with British equanimity. Being unmarried and possessed of a comfortable competence, he could live for a couple of months in the year in furnished rooms close to his club in London, and for the other ten at this admirably conducted boarding-establishment, thus escaping all the responsibilities of house-keeping and of friendship. In London armchair acquaintances sufficed for social needs, they afforded him rubbers of bridge in the cardroom and ample opportunity to curse the weather and the Government in company with kindred spirits; for the rest of the day the perusal of the morning and the evening papers and an hour's constitutional tramp round the park, fulfilled the wants of mind and body. At Wentworth similarly, his bicycle rides, his excellent meals, his comfortable bedroom supplied his physical wants and he had the additional mental satisfaction of being undisputed cock of the walk, whereas among the members at his club there was a sad tendency to think themselves as good as he. But here his tastes and his convenience were consulted before those of any other guest, cream was poured forth for the mollification of his tantrums and his wish was of the nature of law to the economies of the establishment. He was convinced that Mrs. Oxney had no greater pleasure in life than to please him, no greater cross to bear than the sense that all had not been as he would have had it; he regarded himself as being looked on with a pleasant mixture of awe and respectful affection. Every now and then, it is true, there appeared here some outsider who did not seem duly reverential, and at the present moment he had occasional doubts about the true state of Mrs. Holders's sentiments with regard to him, but such possible exceptions were negligible and temporary. They came for their few weeks of cure and passed away again. He bore them no real ill will, and hoped they had profited by their stay. He and Miss Howard alone went on for ever; on the whole he was very much pleased with Miss Howard, and when, in his more romantic moments she appeared to unusual advantage as she sat in profile against a dark wall (a rather favourite position of hers) he wondered if he would be more comfortable with an establishment of his own, and a presentable middle-aged woman to look after him, and bear his name. Her occasional allusions to her little place in Kent were interesting. Indeed he really asked very little of life; only that he should be quite well, and ride a great many miles on his bicycle, and that Wentworth should unweariedly admire all he did, and sun itself in his approbation. Given that these modest requirements had been granted when, between half-past ten and eleven at night, he did a few energetic dumb-bell exercises before going to bed, he claimed nothing more of the morrow than that it should be like to-day; sufficient unto the day had been the good thereof. That something should have occurred like the felling of his favourite tree, or the unpunctuality of Miss Howard at lunch, which had caused a tantrum, would not prove to have spoiled the day; he was large-minded enough to take a broader view than that.
Plans and retrospections eddied pleasantly round in his head, the volume of Macaulay's Essays, already upside down, slipped from his hand, and he indulged as usual in half an hour's nap, from which the sound of the dressing-gong and the entry of the maid with his hot water, roused him. Here was a fine opportunity to linger before making his toilet, in order to demonstrate to others what an inconvenient thing it was not to be punctual. But, being very hungry, he scorned so paltry a reprisal. He had not quite finished with his evening paper for there was a leader on the coal strike which a cursory glance had shewn him was written in a vein which he thoroughly approved, and he took it down with him to read it as he dined.
Colonel Chase openly used spectacles for reading when he was alone, and furtively in company, slipping them off if he thought they would be noticed, for they were a little out of keeping with that standard