An Act in a Backwater. E. F. Benson

      “I didn’t say anything, Colonel,” he remarked.

      “No, sir,” retorted the Colonel, “there is nothing to be said. There is no justification possible for our policy. Childish and suicidal I call it, because I am a man who doesn’t mince matters, and isn’t afraid of speaking his mind. Bring me a whisky and soda, waiter. Ah, here is Hewson. Now perhaps we shall get a game of whist at last.”

      “I am not late, Colonel,” he said. “It is only just the half hour.”

      “Let us lose no more time in getting to our whist,” repeated Colonel Raymond.

      Mr. Newbolt had furtively picked up the paper which the Colonel had dropped on Mr. Hewson’s entry.

      “Hullo, here is news for you,” said he; “Lord Avesham is dead.”

      “God bless my soul!” cried the Colonel, wheeling suddenly round. “Dead? My noble relative dead? Pooh, I don’t believe a word of it. It’s some lie of that infernal Radical paper of yours. Why, it was only the other day that—Let’s look.”

      He took the paper out of Mr. Newbolt’s unresisting hand.

      “Expired at nine o’clock this morning at his residence in Prince’s Gate,” he read. “Yes, Number Seventeen, that’s quite right. Seems to be true. Very shocking, indeed. Poor Avesham, poor fellow. Family all there—I must send a wire. No, I’ll send it after our whist, or to-morrow morning first thing. Dear me, dear, dear me! Waiter, am I going to wait all night for that whisky and soda? Bring it to the card-room, and look sharp.”

      “He seems to have been ill some time,” said Mr. Newbolt, in quiet, precise tones. “I suppose you expected it, Colonel?”

      “No, sir, I did not,” he replied. “The report of his illness was greatly exaggerated. It’s a blow to me, a blow.”

      And the Colonel strutted out of the room, followed by the three others, as if Lord Avesham’s death had brought him within a life or two of the title.

      Colonel Raymond’s whist was as explosive as his manner among his old cronies, and was conducted on principles founded crookedly on Cavendish. The rule there inculcated to retain command of a suit, he interpreted by readings of his own, and thus it not infrequently happened that a perfect spate of kings and aces would burst from his hand after his adversaries had begun to rough the suit. His unhappy partner had to cower beneath the rain of winning cards and censure when this happened.

      “You should have drawn the trumps, sir,” the Colonel would say; “a baby in arms would have drawn the trumps. You could see I was keeping command of the ordinary suits, and if you had only had the sense to draw the trumps they would all have made. My deal, I think; cut again, please, I hate a slovenly cut. Let’s see, that’s a treble. We pay dear for your mistake. Honours? Two against us by honours. One of the instances, as Cavendish says, where a weak hand could have been turned into a winning hand by a little judgment and forethought.”

      His partner, if discreet, would not reply, but sometimes, goaded to frenzy, if the same sort of thing had happened before that evening, he would point out with perfect justice that he had positively had no opportunity of taking a trick, as the Colonel held all the winning cards, and that being the case he might have played one of them, and opened trumps for himself.

      That was what Colonel Raymond was waiting for.

      “And weaken my own suit, sir,” he would cry, “and spoil all chance of what I was playing for. What would have been the use of that? You fail to understand the elementary laws of the game. You will spend an hour with Cavendish now and then, as I’m not ashamed to do, if you take my advice. It will save you many rubbers.”

      But his partner, if wise, would say nothing, possessing his soul in a show, at any rate, of patience until the Colonel revoked. Sometimes he revoked early, sometimes late, but one revoke in an evening might be confidently looked for. It cost three tricks, it is true, but peace at any price was the motto of the Colonel’s partner, for after the revoke occurred the Colonel ceased to be a man of war, and let his kings die like men under the stroke of the ace. At other times he would cover his mistakes with humorous gallantry.

      “I ought to have played the queen, sir, and I acknowledge it,” he would be so kind as to say; “but I couldn’t bear that that knave of a king—knave of a king, ha, ha!—should take her from me. The fair sex, sir, the fair sex.”

      Morton Hall, the country-seat of the Colonel’s noble relative, was only a few miles out of Wroxton, and when he returned home that evening to dinner, after breaking the news of Lord Avesham’s death to Mrs. Raymond and his daughters, he held a loud, overbearing discussion across the table (for at home, as among his old cronies, his gallantry was relaxed) as to whether the eldest son of his deceased relative would be able to keep it open. The family was poor, and the Colonel asserted angrily, as if he had been personally affronted, that the death duties would be so heavy that they would have to let it.

      “Don’t tell me,” he said, sipping his soup with a sound of many waters, though nobody had told him anything. “Don’t tell me. They are as poor as rats. Pepper, give me the pepper. I’d sooner wash my hands in this soup, Constance, than drink it. Simple water, simple warm water. As poor as rats. Poorer. It’s all that infernal Radical government. We are the best blood in England—the Aveshams are the best blood in England, and have served their king and country for five hundred years. There ought to be a government grant. Take away the soup.”

      Mrs. Raymond was a resigned and feeble woman, with a thin, vague face which it was impossible to remember. Ten years of married life with her husband had made a phantom of her. She had the wreck of long-departed prettiness about her, but that had been sunk, becoming, as it were, a total loss, leaving her face devoid of any qualities. Her mind was destitute of hopes, aims, and regrets; she was as intangible to description as a moonbeam.

      “It would be impossible to provide for all the families of all the poor peers in England, Robert,” she suggested.

      “Impossible? Yes, if you have a government of Atheists and Socialists, who are afraid of the Sultan, and wish to abolish the House of Lords—God bless it! That is where the fault lies. England is going to the dogs. I wish, Constance, you would sometimes get hold of fish that is eatable. Worcester sauce. Give me the Worcester sauce. Venison—my fish is venison. Going to the dogs. Why, in the good old days it was sufficient for a man to be connected with a bishop or a peer to make sure of a government office. The apotheosis of the brewer, that’s what I call the England of to-day. Take away the fish. What else is there for dinner?”

      “It is very hard to get good fish in this weather,” said Mrs. Raymond. “It is next to impossible to keep it.”

      “Impossible? Nonsense. You women have no method. You’ve only got to keep it cool. No method at all. You keep fish all day in a hot kitchen, and then expect it to be good in the evening.”

      “The fish was only sent in at half past six this evening,” said his wife, in a low, monotonous voice. “It was so late I thought it would not be here in time for dinner.”

      “And a good thing if it hadn’t been,” retorted the Colonel; “I’d sooner have no fish at all than fish like that—uneatable, perfectly uneatable.”

      Mrs. Raymond was silent, and the meal proceeded to the noise only of knives and forks.

      “Arthur Avesham, too,” broke out the Colonel again. “He’ll have to make his way in the world alone now. What’s to happen to him and Jeannie? Tell me that. Some ignoramus said the other day that his father had bought him a place in Dalton’s brewery here. I don’t believe a word of it, not a word of it. Even if it’s true, what then? Eh?”

      “Perhaps he’ll go on living at Morton, if it’s true,” said Mrs. Raymond, “or perhaps he’ll take a house at Wroxton.”

      “Take a house in Wroxton?” cried her husband, again insulted. “Sheer nonsense. There’s not a house in the town to live in