PAYING GUESTS. E. F. Benson
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of perfect health and vigour of which he was so striking an example. Still they were useful with small print (print was not what it used to be, or the electric light, probably owing to the coal strike, was not so luminous) and by propping his paper against his cruet he thought they would be unnoticed. Occasionally he glanced over the top of it at the new arrival of the afternoon, who sat at a table close in front of him. She was a good-looking woman of middle age, of healthy and attractive appearance, wearing a fixed bright smile for no particular reason. She was evidently on the best terms with life, and until Colonel Chase saw that at the conclusion of dinner she walked out with a pronounced limp, and leaned heavily on a stick, he had felt sure that she was no patient in search of health. The dining-room had cleared before he finished his glass of port, and when he went out, the guests with Mrs. Oxney and Mrs. Bertram, were sitting in the lounge. This was the usual procedure. They all sat talking there till he joined them and proposed the pastime which he preferred. Usually he liked playing bridge and a table was formed. Sometimes he challenged Mrs. Oxney to a game of chess which always ended in the capture of all her pieces (for he ran no risks,) and a brilliant check-mate. But before that there would generally be two or three guests trying to solve the cross-word puzzle in the evening paper, and though he invariably professed never to glance at a cross-word puzzle, his quiet work at it in his room before dinner often enabled him to help them with some wonderful extempore solutions. To-night, Miss Kemp, Mrs. Oxney and Mrs. Holders formed the cross-word group, and were sadly at loss for nearly everything. In a corner of the lounge, away from any possible draught, Mr. Kemp had successfully cornered the new bright smiling guest and was telling her all about Bath and Buxton and Harrogate and Aix. Mrs. Oxney, with apologies for interrupting Mr. Kemp's conversation introduced Colonel Chase to her as Mrs. Bliss, a name which seemed to suit her excellently, and then claimed his assistance in the puzzle.
"We shall get on better now that the Colonel will help us," she said. "Such a difficult one to-night, Colonel."
Colonel Chase quite forgot that he had pencilled the greater part of this arduous puzzle into his evening paper, and put it carelessly down on the table by the particular armchair that was always reserved for him.
"I'm sure if it's difficult I shan't be of much use to you," he said. "I've no head for these things."
"Oh, but you're wonderful," said Mrs. Oxney, "a town in Morocco, six letters. How is one to know that if one's never been there? Perhaps I'd better get an atlas."
"No, no, wait a minute," said Colonel Chase. "Let's do without an atlas if we can. Let me think now. Fez? No, that is too short. Now what is that other place? It's on the tip of my tongue. Six letters, did you say? Ha! Tetuan! How will that suit you?"
A chorus of praise went up and so did Mrs. Holders's eyebrows.
"And it fits unicorn," cried Miss Kemp in ecstasy. "We should never have guessed Tetuan. Then thirteen down, the Latin for south-west wind, eight letters, and if Tetuan's right, which it must be because of unicorn, there's an 'n' for the fifth."
"Latin: come, come! I've forgotten all my Latin," said this fatuous man. "If it was Hindustanee now. . . . But let me try to be a boy again. There's Boreas, but that's north wind I'm afraid, and too short for you. You've stumped me there. Wait a moment though: Ovid; something in Ovid. I've got it. Try 'Favonius'. See if Favonius will help you."
Shrill sounded the chorus of praise, because Favonius fitted 'vampire' and 'alpha'.
"I knew you'd make short work of it, Colonel," said Mrs. Oxney. "You're a positive encyclopædia; that's what I always say of you. And what's a trigonometrical term of six letters with an 's' for the third? You ought to go in for the prizes, indeed you ought, for you'd win every one."
"Upon my word, Mrs. Oxney, you want to know a lot to-night," said he. "I must recollect my mathematics as well as my Latin, and perhaps you'll want Hebrew next. Trigonometry now: there's equation, no, perhaps you'd call that algebra. But there's tangent, only that's got no 's': there's 'sine' . . . oh, put down 'cosine'. Cosine's right."
"Why, I never heard of such a thing," said Mrs. Oxney. "How can I guess what I've never heard of? Cosine! Fancy?"
A diabolical notion, worthy only of a low mind struck Tim Bullingdon. Colonel Chase had got up and was standing commandingly by the fire-place with his back half-turned. So Tim drew his copy of the evening paper from the table, and stealthily turned to the cross-word page, where he found the entire puzzle legibly pencilled in. Then he skilfully replaced the paper again, and pointing to it, winked at Mrs. Holders. That ingenious lady guessed his purport, and gave a little squeal of laughter which she converted into an unconvincing cough . . . So while Colonel Chase now feigned hesitation over 'frieze', 'crampit' and 'piston' Mr. Bullingdon dreamily but fluently supplied them all. These brilliant suggestions finished the puzzle and the Colonel after magnanimously complimenting him on his quickness, invited the three ladies of the group to play bridge with him in the smoking-room. Miss Howard in view of her improvisation at the entertainment next week betook herself to the piano in the drawing-room to fix in her mind a few fragments of extempore melody.
Mr. Kemp meantime had been enjoying a splendid innings. He was accustomed to tell the long and tragic history of his left hip from March 3, 1920, to listeners, over whose eyes, as the sad epic proceeded, there often came a sort of glazed look. That, of course, never deterred him in any way from continuing but he told it much more vividly to-night, for this bright smiling Mrs. Bliss was full of attention and eager interest. She seemed intensely sympathetic, and, at the conclusion, when he had fully recounted the complete stiffening of that once mobile joint, she closed her eyes for a moment as if in prayer, and her mouth grew grave. Then her bright smile returned to it in full radiance, after this short eclipse.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am for you, dear Mr. Kemp," she said. "So sorry, truly sorry."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," said he. "I feel that you are one of the few who realise what a martyrdom I have to go through. Most people have so little imagination. It has been a real pleasure talking to you, and to go back for a moment to that morning when first I found--"
She leaned forward, smiling more than ever.
"And shall I--may I tell you, why I am so sorry for you?" she asked.
"Please do," said Mr. Kemp. An explanation seemed rather unnecessary for it was clear that her kind and sympathetic nature accounted for that. But he was a little hoarse with talking so much, and he did not mind the interruption.
The radiance of her smile was marvellous.
"It will surprise you," she said. "But the reason I'm so sorry for you is that you think your left hip is stiffened, and that you think you suffer all these agonies. It's a huge mistake: there's nothing whatever the matter with you, and you never have any pain at all. There isn't such a thing as pain. All is harmony and you're perfectly well."
Mr. Kemp could hardly believe his ears. This declaration sounded merely like a coarse and unmerited insult. And yet when he looked at that radiant smile and those sympathetic eyes, it was hard to believe that Mrs. Bliss intended it as such. He curbed the indignant exclamation that rose to his lips.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I've just been telling you how I got worse and worse especially after that miscreant at Aix had been handling the joint."
"I know, and now I tell you that it's all Error. Sin and illness and pain and death are all Error. Omnipotent Mind couldn't have made them and therefore they don't exist. Nothing has any real existence except love, health, harmony and happiness."
"But when I feel a sharp pain like a red-hot knitting-needle being thrust into my hip"--began Mr. Kemp.
"Error. Omnipotent Mind governs all. All is mind, and there can be no sensation in matter."
"But, God bless my soul," said Mr. Kemp.
"He does," said this astonishing lady. "Hold on to that thought and the body will utter no complaints. Dear Mr. Kemp, all belief in pain and sickness comes from Error. Therefore there is neither pain nor sickness: it is unreal and vanishes as soon as we realise its unreality. Hence all healing comes from Mind, and not from materia medica."
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