PAYING GUESTS. E. F. Benson
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