E. F. Benson - PAYING GUESTS

"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--"