to each other, and not fly into passions or behave like kings and emperors, however long we've spent in India, and however many tigers and tiffins we have shot. For my part, I never believed much in his story of the tiger which charged him, and which he shot through the heart when it was two yards away. I'm sure I wish evil to nobody, but I shouldn't have minded if the tiger had given him a good nip first, to teach him manners. And why he should have jugs of cream at lunch and hot scones for tea because he lost his temper I don't know. Skim-milk and a bit of dry bread would have been more suitable."
These awful remarks were addressed to Tim Bullingdon only, for the sisters had gone to avert the wrath to come, Miss Howard had taken the soupy twilight-sketch to the tap, and Florence Kemp had gone out with her father to the chairs under the cedar, where she read aloud to him till he went to sleep.
"I wouldn't have been in his regiment for anything," said Tim, cake-walking about the lounge, for gentle exercise though painful was recommended. "I would sooner have been in hell."
"So would I," said Mrs. Holders cordially, "and thought it very agreeable in comparison. By the way, there's an envelope on the writing-table in the smoking-room addressed to his Excellency the Viceroy. That's meant for us to see. Have you seen it?"
"Good Lord, yes," said Tim. "It's been there since yesterday morning. I put it in the waste-paper basket once, but it's back again and getting quite dusty. If it's there tomorrow morning, I shall address another envelope to King George, Personal."
Mrs. Holders squeaked again.
"That would be a beauty for him," she said. "Mind you do it. Here he is back from the town coming up the drive. What a red face!"
Colonel Chase banged the front door and came puffing in to the lounge.
"Pretty state of things," he said. "It seems a perpetual holiday for the working classes. That's what makes them out of hand. Early closing to-day, and late opening tomorrow, I shouldn't wonder, and then comes Sunday, and I shouldn't be surprised if it was a Bank-holiday on Monday."
"Dear me!" said Mrs Holders. "Then you've had your ride for nothing. What a disappointment. Never mind, get a good game of golf."
Colonel Chase flung himself into a chair, and mopped his face.
"And no sign of Miss Howard," he said. "I told her I should be back in twenty minutes. Women have no idea of time. Qui-hi, Miss Howard."
"I expect that's Hindustanee," said Mrs. Holders. "What a pleasure to talk so many languages. Parlez-vous Français, monsieur?"
Colonel Chase had again that horrid sense of uncertainty as to whether Mrs. Holders was not in some obstruse manner poking fun at him, but, as usual, the notion seemed incredible. Then snatches of song were heard from the landing at the top of the stairs, and Miss Howard came tripping along it. The tap-water had done wonders for the viscous fog, and she looked forward to making a success of her sketch after all. It was to be called 'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day'. She carried her bag of golf clubs with her and was quite ready.
The two went out together through the garden to the golf-field. A perfect swarm of gardeners and odd men and chauffeurs and boot-boys were busy hauling the touchwood tree from the middle green.
"Why, what's all this?" said Colonel Chase, stopping short. "My tree, my hazard, my bunker, my favourite hazard. Cut down! Upon my word now! I wonder by whose orders that was done. Ah, there's Mrs. Oxney. What's all this, Mrs. Oxney?"
Mrs. Oxney came forward like Esther before Ahasuerus.
"Oh, dear me, such a sad accident, Colonel," she said, "though it will be all right in a few minutes now. The tree fell right across the green. So clumsy! But they've got it moving. I had to have it cut down: all gone at the root and so dangerous. What should I have felt if it had come crashing down when you were in the middle of one of your beautiful puttings?"
This was an improvisation as brilliant as Miss Howard's on the piano, and far less rehearsed. But it gave little satisfaction.
"Well, you've removed the only decent hazard in the place," he said. "I'm sorry it has happened for I've been toiling all the summer to get a few sporting holes for you. I should have thought you might have had it propped up or something of the sort. No matter. Take the honour, Miss Howard, and let's be off, or it will be dark before we've played our twenty holes."
Chapter II
This inauspicious afternoon finished better than might have been anticipated. The Colonel's favourite hazard, it is true, was laid low, but the trunk now dragged to the edge of the green, was discovered to be a very well-placed bunker, when Miss Howard put the ball underneath it in an unplayable position, and thus enabled Colonel Chase to win the match. Then it was found that Mrs. Oxney's chauffeur who was an ingenious mechanic could put the pedometer to rights with the greatest ease. (He geared it a shade too high, so that for the future when Colonel Chase had ridden seven-eights of a mile it recorded a full mile, and so ever afterwards when he rode thirty-two miles, as he so often did, he could inform admiring Wentworth with indisputable evidence to back him, that he had ridden thirty-six. A pleasing spell of record-breaking ensued.)
After a quantity of hot scones for tea, he retired to his bedroom according to his usual custom for a couple of hours of solid reading before dinner. He took from a small book-shelf above his bed, which contained for the most part old Army lists, an antique copy of Macaulay's Essays which he had won as a prize for Geography at school, and before settling down to read made himself very comfortable in a large armchair with his pipe and tobacco handy. Then he glanced at the news in the evening paper, which for many months now had put him in a towering passion since it so largely concerned the coal strike. All strikers, according to his firm conviction, were damned lazy skunks, who refused to do a stroke of work, because they preferred to be supported in idle luxury by the dole, while Mr. Cook was a Bolshevist, whom Colonel Chase, so he repeatedly affirmed, would have rejoiced to hang with his own hands, having heartily flogged him first. There would soon have been an end of the strike if the weak-kneed Government had only done what he had recommended from the very beginning. Then, in order to quiet and calm his mind he mused over a cross-word puzzle, jotting down in pencil the solutions which seemed to fit. Half an hour generally sufficed to break the back of it, and then he leaned back in his chair, opened Macaulay's Essays at random, and gave himself up to meditation.
This meditation was always agreeable, for its origin, the cave out of which it so generously gushed was his strong and profound satisfaction with himself, and this gave a pleasant flavour to whatever he thought about. He had had a thoroughly creditable though uneventful career in the army, and on his retirement two years ago, found himself able to contemplate the past and await the future with British equanimity. Being unmarried and possessed of a comfortable competence, he could live for a couple of months in the year in furnished rooms close to his club in London, and for the other ten at this admirably conducted boarding-establishment, thus escaping all the responsibilities of house-keeping and of friendship. In London armchair acquaintances sufficed for social needs, they afforded him rubbers of bridge in the cardroom and ample opportunity to curse the weather and the Government in company with kindred spirits; for the rest of the day the perusal of the morning and the evening papers and an hour's constitutional tramp round the park, fulfilled the wants of mind and body. At Wentworth similarly, his bicycle rides, his excellent meals, his comfortable bedroom supplied his physical wants and he had the additional mental satisfaction of being undisputed cock of the walk, whereas among the members at his club there was a sad tendency to think themselves
