THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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 billiards 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, billiards 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 nightcap, though you would have thought he had plenty of nightcaps 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 her light, but fortunately the singing had ceased.
* * *
Tonight, 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 farther 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 tonight had been the accompaniment to Puffin's second tumbler.
"Devilish fine woman she was," he said, "and that was the last 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&O at Bombay," objected Puffin. "Or did she go up to the hills on the deck of the P&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 nightcap, 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 tomorrow 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 else's 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 —