Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Mrs. Bliss had joined them in the lounge just as he said this. Mr. Kemp was there, too, and Florence, and Mrs. Oxney, and Mrs. Holders, and all were witnesses of what occurred.

  Mrs. Bliss, leaning on her stick, was standing close to the Colonel with her left hand behind her back.

  “No, Colonel Chase,” she said, “you needn’t order another. Guess what I’ve got in my hand: no peeping!”

  “Not my—” began the Colonel. Emotion choked his utterance. Mrs. Bliss held out her left hand to him and said, “Peep-o!” There it lay, bright and clean, for Mr. Amble had polished it up beautifully.

  “So glad: such a privilege,” she said charmingly.

  He grasped the beloved object and shook it. It ticked as brightly as ever.

  “My dear lady, I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “I shall certainly go for a walk this afternoon for the pleasure of using it again. The Bliss-pedometer: may I christen it the Bliss-pedometer? Where did you find it?”

  A dreamy absent sort of look came into Mrs. Bliss’s eyes.

  “Down in the town I think,” she said. “Sometimes I lose myself in thought, and this morning, just before my bath, I was meditating deeply and joyfully as I strolled about in the sweet sunshine. And then there it was in my hand! Did I pick it up? Perhaps that was it. Or did someone give it me? Who knows? But somehow I felt sure that I should find it for you. So pleased!”

  The effect of this was immense: a sort of awe fell on Wentworth generally, with the exception of Tim Bullingdon, who, when Mrs. Holders told him of the marvellous recovery of the valuable instrument merely said, “Oh, that blasted thing has been found, has it? More pedometer-chat!” But apart from him a very profound impression was made, and the reappearance of the pedometer was generally considered to belong to the same class of manifestations as the disappearance of the Colonel’s cold: a notion which Mrs. Bliss certainly did not discourage. A small committee held in Mrs. Oxney’s room after lunch inclined to the opinion that Colonel Chase should now be told to whom he owed (in some mysterious manner) both these benefits. The reappearance of the pedometer, taken alone, might be held to be just a lucky chance; so, too, possibly might the miraculous disappearance of his cold; but taken together with Mrs. Bliss as direct agent (under Mind) in both, they clearly outran any reasonable theory of coincidence. He might have got in one tantrum if a spiritual cause had been suggested for his convalescence only, and in another if the same had been assigned to the recovery of his pedometer, but when the two were presented together, it was felt there need be no apprehension about tantrums. Mrs. Bliss took no part in this conference, for they all knew from what source she derived these manifestations of health and harmony, but went out and sat under the cedar, where she pursued her mental work.

  Colonel Chase had gone off for a walk, in spite of the morning’s record on the wheel, in order to feel the pulse of his pedometer beating again in the region of his liver, and had given some thought to the happy reappearance of the instrument. It was wrapped in mystery: Mrs. Bliss apparently had found it while in a species of trance, and though he would have been naturally inclined to scoff at trances, there seemed to be something to be said for them. He already knew that she was a believer in the power of Mind and such hocus-pocus, but if hocus-pocus could find pedometers, he had no quarrel with it. In consequence, when on his vigorous return from his walk Mrs. Oxney told him that the same lady had given him mental treatment for that tornado of a cold which had fallen on him yesterday, he listened without any symptom of tantrums.

  “And you know as well as I do, Colonel, if not better,” said Mrs. Oxney in conclusion, “that when you have a cold it is a cold, not a matter of two sneezes and a drop of eucalyptus on your handkerchief. Your cold always means a day in bed, and pulls you down dreadfully, and if ever you had a cold in your life yesterday was the day. But here you are now making records in the morning and your pedometer in your pocket in the afternoon, and never looking better, though last night you were in for one of your worst.”

  Colonel Chase was proud of his fair-mindedness.

  “Upon my word, that’s all quite true,” he said. “I don’t wish to deny it. And then, as you say, the whole trouble vanished. Yet it must be stuff and nonsense. The woman’s a crank if she thinks she cured me.”

  “Well, if she’s a crank I’m a crank too,” said Mrs. Oxney, “and that’s a thing I’ve never been called before. It’s not your cold only, there’s that pedometer. I said to her, ‘Couldn’t you rely on Mind, Mrs. Bliss, and discover it for him?’ Those were my very words, and no sooner had I said them than she closed her eyes and sat silent. We all noticed it. And then what does she do but find it in her hand?”

  This powerful presentment of the case impressed him.

  “Yes, I’m bound to say it’s most remarkable,” said he. “I’m no bigot, I hope: I’ve got an open mind on every question, and I know there are some things I can’t account for. I’ve seen the mango-trick in India, but really . . . And yet one can hardly believe it. I must look into it. How does Mrs. Bliss explain it?”

  “She just says, with that sweet smile of hers, that all is harmony and health, and what she did was to realise it for you.”

  The Colonel’s robust intellect made a final effort to reject all it could not understand, and called his sense of humour to its aid.

  “I’m sure it’s not all harmony when Miss Howard gets to the piano,” he said. “But that’s flippant of me. I’m bound to say I can’t understand it at all. Amazing! According to all my experience, I should have been in bed all day instead of bicycling thirty-seven miles this morning without fatigue, and going for a walk with my pedometer this afternoon. By all chances, it should have been crushed to bits under some lout’s foot.”

  Colonel Chase, it need hardly be said, would have pooh-poohed the whole affair if it had happened to anybody else, calling it bunkum and piffle, and gammon and spinach, just as he pooh-poohed every ghost story in the world except his own psychical experiences in the dak-bungalow, calling them liver and indigestion, and imagination and nerves. But anything that happened to himself was of another order of phenomena, and that evening he entered into somewhat condescending intercourse with Mrs. Bliss. He shrewdly catechised her about the action of Mind, just as he might have catechised a doctor about the action of quinine, and said, “Ah; so that’s your theory, is it?” to her explanations. But the leaven had begun to work, and more than once over bridge that evening, Mrs. Oxney thought she saw him close his eyes and smile like Mr. Kemp and Florence and Mrs. Bliss. And, beyond doubt, his manner to his partner was far less hectoring. He even allowed that on one occasion he might have played a hand better.

  The rest of the week passed busily but uneventfully away bringing Wentworth nearer to the momentous days which were coming. The first of the fateful series was Sunday, when there might be expected a reply from Slam to Mrs. Holder’s enquiry. Most of the guests at Wentworth took in the Sunday Telegraph as a rule, but all those who were interested in bridge, had on this occasion ordered the Sunday Gazette instead. Usually it came during breakfast-time, but to-day it was annoyingly late, and most of them were in the lounge, starving for Slam, when it arrived. Every one snatched his copy, and there was a loud rustle of paper as they all simultaneously turned to the page where Slam discussed Bridge and White Knight Chess instead of to the leaf on which the cross-word puzzle for the week was set forth. It was considered certain that Mrs. Holders and Colonel Chase ran a dead heat in the perusal of the judicial paragraph, for just as she gave a little squeal of laughter, Colonel Chase said “Pshaw!” or “Tosh!” (opinion differed as to which), and turned with a very red face to less important items. Then a dead hush followed and everyone but he read the long paragraph through twice. It ran thus, among the “Answers to Correspondents”:

  “Wentworth” (Mrs. Holders’s pseudonym). “The case you submit is well worth attention, because it is an admirable example of the fatal declarations too often made by ignorant dealers. There
was no possible excuse for Z declaring two hearts unless he was burdened with superfluous cash. In so doing he completely ruined his partner’s fine hand of diamonds, which would easily have taken Z and Y out and given them the rubber. But, this ludicrous declaration once made, Y was perfectly right to say ‘no bid’, for he naturally expected an overwhelming strength in hearts from Z, which, when once cleared, gave him six tricks in diamonds. Z’s proper call, of course, was ‘one heart’ (doubtful) or ‘No bid’, in which case Y would have declared ‘two diamonds’. B’s ‘double’ was perfectly sound. In fact, we can only recommend A, B, and Y to disregard any declaration of Z’s, if they ever have the misfortune to play with him again, until he has learned the elements of the game. We append the hands with a diagram as a warning to those who make these imbecile declarations.”

  Among the students of the Sunday Gazette was Florence, and she was thrilled to see her hand (Y) just as it had been dealt her with all those beautiful diamonds put in the paper with a diagram, and to be told by the oracle that she was quite right to have said no bid. Altogether forgetting Colonel Chase in the irrepressible joy of this publicity she cried out:

  “Oh, look, Papa. Here’s the game we had the other night, and I’m Y. That night I was so late, do you remember? Slam says I was quite right to say no bid. Isn’t that sweet of him, and aren’t my diamonds lovely? And that’s where Mrs. Oxney sat and she’s A., and Mrs. Holders is B, who doubled. How it all comes back! And Z, why—”

  During the painful silence which followed these unfortunate remarks Colonel Chase was seen to close his eyes for a moment and smile, but when he opened them again, he did not seem much better. His hand which held the wretched sheet trembled with fury, and so did his voice which gradually rose to a roar.

  “I see Slam comments on the hand you sent up for his decision, Mrs. Holders,” he said. “I can only say that I totally disagree with him. Probably he’s just a little cock of the walk at Tooting Junior Bridge Club, if all was known. I suppose he likes to play the little tin god. I shall certainly write and put my view of the case, though I expect he’s too dense to understand it. I shall sign it, too, instead of cowering under a nickname. ‘Slam’ indeed! ‘Revoke’ would be a more suitable name for him, I shouldn’t wonder. Impertinent little anonymous jackanapes.”

  What further ebullition would have followed is unknown, for even as he said jackanapes, Colonel Chase to the awe of the whole assembly was suddenly stopped by an appalling fit of sneezing. Again and again he sneezed, the convulsions seemed interminable.

  “God bless me” — (crash), he said. “I believe I’ve caught another” — (crash)— “cold. Abominable nonsense; enough to make a man—”

  He stopped seeing Mrs. Bliss’s serene and limpid gaze smilingly fixed on him. She held up her finger as if in tender rebuke of a naughty child.

  “Harmony, peace, and health deny inharmony, worry, sickness,” she said. “All is Mind: Mind is all. O Colonel Chase!”

  If catalepsy or sudden death had fallen on every human being in the lounge, Wentworth could not have been stricken into more rigid immobility. Openly to rebuke Colonel Chase when in a tantrum was not only impossible in fact, but incredible in theory. And yet having done it, Mrs. Bliss smilingly closed her eyes as if she had done nothing at all, and Mr. Kemp and Florence followed her example, calmly demonstrating. Mrs. Oxney tried to do the same, but curiosity as to how the Colonel would take this was too strong, and she had to keep a flickering eyelid open.

  Colonel Chase cleared his throat; he sniffed, he sneezed once more and once only, and his catarrh and his fury seemed to vanish like morning mists.

  “Dear me, I thought I’d caught cold again,” he said, “but it’s a false alarm. And . . . I suppose we mustn’t harbour unkind thoughts about anyone. And bridge, too, is only a game. Ha! Quite so! Nearly church time, isn’t it? I shall walk there on this beautiful morning.”

  The omnibus which took Wentworth to church on Sunday free of charge was unusually full after this spiritual manifestation, which brought harmony out of tantrums, and Mrs. Oxney was unable to consider it a coincidence that the first hymn was ‘O happy band of Pilgrims’. All day harmony, so miraculously restored after that wild outburst, shone on Colonel Chase, he and his pedometer had a wonderful walk that afternoon and throughout the peaceful rubber of bridge in which the criminal Mrs. Holders took part, his hands dripped with trumps and kings and aces and convenient singletons. He adopted an almost reverential attitude towards Mrs. Bliss, and as he performed his dumb-bell exercises that night he beat time to his vigorous movements with denials of anger, malice and colds in the head. He was aware how rightly he had been known in India as a hard-headed fellow, but such a marvellous series of things that had happened to him personally (and therefore could not be bosh and gammon and piffle and spinach) could not be overlooked by a fair-minded man. Their attribution to coincidence must be definitely abandoned: it would not meet the case. Getting into bed he closed his eyes and battened on the conception of himself as completely happy and healthy and prosperous. Under this pleasant treatment he instantly fell fast asleep.

  CHAPTER V

  Indeed there seemed on the ensuing Monday morning, no conquests which were not within the victorious powers of Mental Science. Wentworth might almost become an establishment in direct competition with the baths and nauseating drinkings and general materia medica of Bolton Spa. Mr. Kemp actually refrained from brine that morning, and sat in the lounge reading the Manual, demonstrating over his hip and putting principles to the test by making short walks between window and fire-place. Mrs. Bliss went down to the baths as usual, but Wentworth was now beginning to grant that this violation of right thinking must really be for the sake of her husband, since a woman who could cure colds and tantrums and recover pedometers like that could not be in any need of saline immersion. Before she left, she spoke a few words to a gathering of students in Mrs. Oxney’s room, which was really like a regular class of instruction, and was attended by all the guests (except Mrs. Holders and Tim Bullingdon) as well as a couple of parlour-maids with coughs. She told them that Mental Science filled you with health and energy for the harmonious accomplishment of the duties of life which must by no means be neglected, after which Colonel Chase started blithely off on the chief duty of his life, which was riding a bicycle, and Miss Howard wreathed in smiles tripped down to the Green Salon to drive into its faded walls the nails on which to hang the pictures which were to bring joy and refreshment to so many, and, it was hoped, profit to herself, for the labourer, said Mrs. Bliss, was worthy, sweet girl, of her hire. As for the improvisation which was to take place at the entertainment next day, and not only delight the audience, but bring in funds for the Children’s Hospital, Miss Howard scarcely gave another thought to it, for she found that a mere closing of the eyes, a smile and a silent lifting of the spirit to Mind was sufficient to make her fingers reel out the most elusive passages, and she now felt she really had them by heart. Mrs. Bliss recommended her to give no further thought at all to the improvisation.

  The guests were enjoying a few moments quiet in the lounge after lunch before getting to their jobs again when the Revd. H. Banks, who was responsible for the entertainment tomorrow, and was also himself to sing twice and recite once, came in with ‘an unique appeal.’ He was known to most of the company and was highly popular, for his ecclesiastical duties performed at St. Giles’s amid cottas and banners and maniples and incense and genuflexions were quite a feature at Bolton among visitors, and made you feel, as Miss Howard said, that the Church was a living force. He was a welcome guest also at tennis-parties and teas, and had once said damn, quite out loud in the presence of Colonel Chase, who thought that very broad-minded for a clergyman. In general the Colonel had a low opinion of parsons since they had done nothing to check the abominable selfishness of the lower classes, in striking for a living wage, which had caused taxation to grow to such monstrous proportions. But Banks was an excellent fellow: except in church yo
u would not know he was a padre at all. . . .

  “A most calamitous thing has befallen us,” said this broad-minded padre, “for Mr. Graves the masseur who was to entertain us with his most amusing stories tomorrow night has gone to bed with influenza, and Dr. Dobbs absolutely forbids him to take part in our effort for the Children’s Hospital tomorrow, unless he thinks he will enjoy an attack of pneumonia.”

  The eyes of all the guests which had been fixed on Mr. Banks, wheeled like a flock of plovers and settled on Mrs. Bliss. Would Mind (such was the instinctive though unspoken question) disperse Mr. Graves’s influenza as it had dispersed the Colonel’s cold? Mr. Banks, of course, could not be expected to understand what these earnest, enquiring glances meant, and though slightly disconcerted by thus suddenly losing everyone’s attention, proceeded to make his appeal.

  “Jolly rough luck just the day before our entertainment,” he said, “but who knows whether there may not be a silver lining to our cloud? Everyone in Bolton has heard that we have among us, present here, a superb raconteur, and my Committee unanimously deputed me to find out whether our friend Colonel Chase would not consent to take his place.”

  All eyes wheeled again to the Colonel. Wonderful though a demonstration of Mind over the masseur would have been, there was no need for it now.

  “Oh, what a treat that would be,” said Mrs. Oxney. “Often and often I’ve felt quite selfish when Colonel Chase has been telling his wonderful stories to just a handful of listeners, to think how many people longed to hear him and didn’t get the chance. Do, Colonel!”

  “Oh, do!” said Miss Howard, “I shan’t feel nearly so nervous if I’m to follow you, for everyone will be in such a good temper. Padre, you must persuade him.”

  Florence added her appeal.

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely, Papa?” she said. “You would have to make an effort to go. Oh, do, Colonel Chase!”