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Title: Divots
Author: Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Language: English
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DIVOTS
P. G. WODEHOUSE
By P. G. WODEHOUSE
CARRY ON, JEEVES!
HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
BILL THE CONQUEROR
GOLF WITHOUT TEARS
JEEVES
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
MOSTLY SALLY
THREE MEN AND A MAID
INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE
THE LITTLE WARRIOR
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
DIVOTS
BY
P. G. WODEHOUSE
[Illustration: NEW YORK]
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926 AND 1927,
BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
[Illustration]
DIVOTS
--B--
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY DAUGHTER
LEONORA
WITHOUT WHOSE NEVER-FAILING
SYMPATHY AND ENCOURAGEMENT
THIS BOOK
WOULD HAVE BEEN FINISHED
IN
HALF THE TIME
PREFACE
Before leading the reader out on to this little nine-hole course, I
should like to say a few words on the club-house steps with regard to
the criticisms of my earlier book of Golf stories, _The Clicking of
Cuthbert_. In the first place, I noticed with regret a disposition
on the part of certain writers to speak of Golf as a trivial theme,
unworthy of the pen of a thinker. In connection with this, I can only
say that right through the ages the mightiest brains have occupied
themselves with this noble sport, and that I err, therefore, if I do
err, in excellent company.
Apart from the works of such men as James Braid, John Henry Taylor and
Horace Hutchinson, we find Publius Syrius not disdaining to give advice
on the back-swing (“He gets through too late who goes too fast”);
Diogenes describing the emotions of a cheery player at the water-hole
(“Be of good cheer. I see land”); and Doctor Watts, who, watching one
of his drives from the tee, jotted down the following couplet on the
back of his score-card:
_Fly, like a youthful hart or roe,
Over the hills where spices grow._
And, when we consider that Chaucer, the father of English poetry,
inserted in his Squiere’s Tale the line
_Therefore behoveth him a ful long spoone_
(though, of course, with the modern rubber-cored ball an iron would
have got the same distance) and that Shakespeare himself, speaking
querulously in the character of a weak player who held up an impatient
foursome, said:
_Four rogues in buckram let drive at me_
we may, I think, consider these objections answered.
A far more serious grievance which I have against my critics is that
many of them confessed to the possession of but the slightest knowledge
of the game, and one actually stated in cold print that he did not know
what a niblick was. A writer on golf is certainly entitled to be judged
by his peers--which, in my own case, means men who do one good drive in
six, four reasonable approaches in an eighteen-hole round, and average
three putts per green: and I think I am justified in asking of editors
that they instruct critics of this book to append their handicaps in
brackets at the end of their remarks. By this means the public will
be enabled to form a fair estimate of the worth of the volume, and
the sting in such critiques as “We laughed heartily while reading
these stories--once--at a misprint” will be sensibly diminished by the
figures (36) at the bottom of the paragraph. While my elation will be
all the greater should the words “A genuine masterpiece” be followed by
a simple (scr.).
* * * * *
One final word. The thoughtful reader, comparing this book with _The
Clicking of Cuthbert_, will, no doubt, be struck by the poignant depth
of feeling which pervades the present volume like the scent of muddy
shoes in a locker-room: and it may be that he will conclude that, like
so many English writers, I have fallen under the spell of the great
Russians.
This is not the case. While it is, of course, true that my style owes
much to Dostoievsky, the heart-wringing qualities of such stories as
“The Awakening of Rollo Podmarsh” and “Keeping in with Vosper” is due
entirely to the fact that I have spent much time recently playing on
the National Links at Southampton, Long Island, U.S.A. These links
were constructed by an exiled Scot who conceived the dreadful idea of
assembling on one course all the really foul holes in Great Britain. It
cannot but leave its mark on a man when, after struggling through the
Sahara at Sandwich and the Alps at Prestwick, he finds himself faced by
the Station-Master’s Garden hole at St. Andrew’s and knows that the
Redan and the Eden are just round the corner. When you turn in a medal
score of a hundred and eight on two successive days, you get to know
something about Life.
* * * * *
And yet it may be that there are a few gleams of sunshine in the book.
If so, it is attributable to the fact that some of it was written
before I went to Southampton and immediately after I had won my first
and only trophy--an umbrella in a hotel tournament at Aiken, South
Carolina, where, playing to a handicap of sixteen, I went through a
field consisting of some of the fattest retired businessmen in America
like a devouring flame. If we lose the Walker Cup this year, let
England remember that.
P. G. WODEHOUSE
_The Sixth Bunker
Addington_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE HEART OF A GOOF 15
II HIGH STAKES 51
III KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER 85
IV CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF 116
V THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS 153
VI THE AWAKENING OF ROLLO PODMARSH 183
VII RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY 210
VIII JANE GETS OFF THE FAIRWAY 246
IX THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN 283
DIVOTS
CHAPTER I
THE HEART OF A GOOF
It was a morning when all nature shouted “Fore!” The breeze, as it
blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and
cheer, whispering of chip-shots holed and brassies landing squarely
on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred
dubs, smiled greenly up at the azure sky; and the sun, peeping above
the trees, looked like a giant golf-ball perfectly lofted by the mashie
of some unseen god and about to drop dead by the pin of the eighteenth.
It was the day of the opening of the course after the long winter, and
a crowd of considerable dimensions had collected at the first tee.
Plus fours gleamed in the sunshine, and the air was charged with happy
anticipation.
In all that gay throng there was but one sad face. It belonged to the
man who was waggling his driver over the new ball perched on its little
hill of sand. This man seemed careworn, hopeless. He gazed down the
fairway, shifted his feet, waggled, gazed down the fairway again,
shifted the dogs once more, and waggled afresh. He waggled as Hamlet
might have waggled, moodily, irresolutely. Then, at last, he swung,
and, taking from his caddie the niblick which the intelligent lad had
been holding in readiness from the moment when he had walked on to the
tee, trudged wearily off to play his second.
The Oldest Member, who had been observing the scene with a benevolent
eye from his favourite chair on the terrace, sighed.
“Poor Jenkinson,” he said, “does not improve.”
“No,” agreed his companion, a young man with open features and a
handicap of six. “And yet I happen to know that he has been taking
lessons all the winter at one of those indoor places.”
“Futile, quite futile,” said the Sage with a shake of his snowy head.
“There is no wizard living who could make that man go round in an
average of sevens. I keep advising him to give up the game.”
“You!” cried the young man, raising a shocked and startled face from
the driver with which he was toying. “_You_ told him to give up golf!
Why I thought--”
“I understand and approve of your horror,” said the Oldest Member,
gently. “But you must bear in mind that Jenkinson’s is not an ordinary
case. You know and I know scores of men who have never broken a hundred
and twenty in their lives, and yet contrive to be happy, useful
members of society. However badly they may play, they are able to
forget. But with Jenkinson it is different. He is not one of those who
can take it or leave it alone. His only chance of happiness lies in
complete abstinence. Jenkinson is a goof.”
“A what?”
“A goof,” repeated the Sage. “One of those unfortunate beings who have
allowed this noblest of sports to get too great a grip upon them, who
have permitted it to eat into their souls, like some malignant growth.
The goof, you must understand, is not like you and me. He broods.
He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life.
Jenkinson, for example, was once a man with a glowing future in the
hay, corn, and feed business, but a constant stream of hooks, tops,
and slices gradually made him so diffident and mistrustful of himself,
that he let opportunity after opportunity slip, with the result that
other, sterner, hay, corn, and feed merchants passed him in the race.
Every time he had the chance to carry through some big deal in hay, or
to execute some flashing _coup_ in corn and feed, the fatal diffidence
generated by a hundred rotten rounds would undo him. I understand his
bankruptcy may be expected at any moment.”
“My golly!” said the young man, deeply impressed. “I hope I never
become a goof. Do you mean to say there is really no cure except
giving up the game?”
The Oldest Member was silent for a while.
“It is curious that you should have asked that question,” he said at
last, “for only this morning I was thinking of the one case in my
experience where a goof was enabled to overcome his deplorable malady.
It was owing to a girl, of course. The longer I live, the more I come
to see that most things are. But you will, no doubt, wish to hear the
story from the beginning.”
The young man rose with the startled haste of some wild creature,
which, wandering through the undergrowth, perceives the trap in his
path.
“I should love to,” he mumbled, “only I shall be losing my place at the
tee.”
“The goof in question,” said the Sage, attaching himself with quiet
firmness to the youth’s coat-button, “was a man of about your age, by
name Ferdinand Dibble. I knew him well. In fact, it was to me--”
“Some other time, eh?”
“It was to me,” proceeded the Sage, placidly, “that he came for
sympathy in the great crisis of his life, and I am not ashamed to say
that when he had finished laying bare his soul to me there were tears
in my eyes. My heart bled for the boy.”
“I bet it did. But--”
The Oldest Member pushed him gently back into his seat.
“Golf,” he said, “is the Great Mystery. Like some capricious goddess--”
The young man, who had been exhibiting symptoms of feverishness,
appeared to become resigned. He sighed softly.
“Did you ever read ‘The Ancient Mariner’?” he said.
“Many years ago,” said the Oldest Member. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the young man. “It just occurred to me.”
* * * * *
Golf (resumed the Oldest Member) is the Great Mystery. Like some
capricious goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an
almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we
see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping
every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock knees and
hollow cheeks, who are tearing off snappy seventy-fours. Giants of
finance have to accept a stroke per from their junior clerks. Men
capable of governing empires fail to control a small, white ball, which
presents no difficulties whatever to others with one ounce more brain
than a cuckoo-clock. Mysterious, but there it is. There was no apparent
reason why Ferdinand Dibble should not have been a competent golfer.
He had strong wrists and a good eye. Nevertheless, the fact remains
that he was a dub. And on a certain evening in June I realised that
he was also a goof. I found it out quite suddenly as the result of a
conversation which we had on this very terrace.
I was sitting here that evening thinking of this and that, when by the
corner of the clubhouse I observed young Dibble in conversation with a
girl in white. I could not see who she was, for her back was turned.
Presently they parted and Ferdinand came slowly across to where I sat.
His air was dejected. He had had the boots licked off him earlier in
the afternoon by Jimmy Fothergill, and it was to this that I attributed
his gloom. I was to find out in a few moments that I was partly but not
entirely correct in this surmise. He took the next chair to mine, and
for several minutes sat staring moodily down into the valley.
“I’ve just been talking to Barbara Medway,” he said, suddenly breaking
the silence.
“Indeed?” I said. “A delightful girl.”
“She’s going away for the summer to Marvis Bay.”
“She will take the sunshine with her.”
“You bet she will!” said Ferdinand Dibble, with extraordinary warmth,
and there was another long silence.
Presently Ferdinand uttered a hollow groan.
“I love her, dammit!” he muttered brokenly. “Oh, golly, how I love her!”
I was not surprised at his making me the recipient of his confidences
like this. Most of the young folk in the place brought their troubles
to me sooner or later.
“And does she return your love?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.”
“Why not? I should have thought the point not without its interest for
you.”
Ferdinand gnawed the handle of his putter distractedly.
“I haven’t the nerve,” he burst out at length. “I simply can’t summon
up the cold gall to ask a girl, least of all an angel like her, to
marry me. You see, it’s like this. Every time I work myself up to the
point of having a dash at it, I go out and get trimmed by some one
giving me a stroke a hole. Every time I feel I’ve mustered up enough
pep to propose, I take ten on a bogey three. Every time I think I’m in
good mid-season form for putting my fate to the test, to win or lose
it all, something goes all blooey with my swing, and I slice into the
rough at every tee. And then my self-confidence leaves me. I become
nervous, tongue-tied, diffident. I wish to goodness I knew the man who
invented this infernal game. I’d strangle him. But I suppose he’s been
dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.”
It was at this point that I understood all, and the heart within me
sank like lead. The truth was out. Ferdinand Dibble was a goof.
“Come, come, my boy,” I said, though feeling the uselessness of any
words. “Master this weakness.”
“I can’t.”
“Try!”
“I have tried.”
He gnawed his putter again.
“She was asking me just now if I couldn’t manage to come to Marvis Bay,
too,” he said.
“That surely is encouraging? It suggests that she is not entirely
indifferent to your society.”
“Yes, but what’s the use? Do you know,” a gleam coming into his eyes
for a moment, “I have a feeling that if I could ever beat some really
fairly good player--just once--I could bring the thing off.” The gleam
faded. “But what chance is there of that?”
It was a question which I did not care to answer. I merely patted his
shoulder sympathetically, and after a little while he left me and
walked away. I was still sitting there, thinking over his hard case,
when Barbara Medway came out of the club-house.
She, too, seemed grave and pre-occupied, as if there was something on
her mind. She took the chair which Ferdinand had vacated, and sighed
wearily.
“Have you ever felt,” she asked, “that you would like to bang a man on
the head with something hard and heavy? With knobs on?”
I said I had sometimes experienced such a desire, and asked if she
had any particular man in mind. She seemed to hesitate for a moment
before replying, then, apparently, made up her mind to confide in me.
My advanced years carry with them certain pleasant compensations, one
of which is that nice girls often confide in me. I frequently find
myself enrolled as a father-confessor on the most intimate matters
by beautiful creatures from whom many a younger man would give his
eye-teeth to get a friendly word. Besides, I had known Barbara since
she was a child. Frequently--though not recently--I had given her her
evening bath. These things form a bond.
“Why are men such chumps?” she exclaimed.
“You still have not told me who it is that has caused these harsh
words. Do I know him?”
“Of course you do. You’ve just been talking to him.”
“Ferdinand Dibble? But why should you wish to bang Ferdinand Dibble on
the head with something hard and heavy with knobs on?”
“Because he’s such a goop.”
“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have penetrated
the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t tell
her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond of
me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in _me_, the poor fish?” cried the
high-spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing
grasshopper. “I can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless
he gives some sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I wanted
him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers begging him to
marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come Ferdinand
Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the head kept
rigid and the right leg firmly braced and--”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble would
cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who--” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
“It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their
game. But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to become
morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success at the
game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which keeps a man
from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs he may achieve in
other walks of life; but in all things there is a happy mean, and with
Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has taken all the spirit
out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is grateful to caddies
when they accept a tip instead of drawing themselves up to their full
height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers--I used the term in its broadest sense,
to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed--whom even
he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis Bay, the hotel
links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had drifted all the
pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things done on that
course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes--and I am not a weak
man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as to go round in a fairly
steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope. But I understand he is
not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with him.”
And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.
* * * * *
It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as
the lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity
of summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of play was
rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for some days
after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man who cannot
believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this summer
resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of stout,
middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to making money,
had taken to a game at which real proficiency can only be acquired by
those who start playing in their cradles and keep their weight down.
Out on the course each morning you could see representatives of every
nightmare style that was ever invented. There was the man who seemed to
be attempting to deceive his ball and lull it into a false security by
looking away from it and then making a lightning slash in the apparent
hope of catching it off its guard. There was the man who wielded his
mid-iron like one killing snakes. There was the man who addressed his
ball as if he were stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were
cracking a whip, the man who brooded over each shot like one whose
heart is bowed down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with
his mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He had
gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their faces
with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local amateurs, whose
prowess the octogenarians and the men who went round in bath-chairs
vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was faced on the eighth
morning of his visit by the startling fact that he had no more worlds
to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed, and, what is more,
had won his first trophy, the prize in the great medal-play handicap
tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of the field by two strokes,
edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old gentleman, by means
of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last hole. The prize was
a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the old oaken bucket, and
Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately after dinner to croon over
it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did not
take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a sick
parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a couple of
weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the daily letters
which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started writing, he found
that he used up so much space describing his best shots on the links
that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a declaration of undying
passion. After all, you can hardly cram that sort of thing into a
postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile pursued
his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in one way, for
every morning and afternoon that passed was adding new layers to his
self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew chestier and chestier.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen mutterings
were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the spirit of
revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not escaped the
notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty as a normally
unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I am sorry to say that
the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand was the aggressive type of
chestiness which breeds enemies. He had developed a habit of holding
the game up in order to give his opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker
had not forgiven, and never would forgive, his well-meant but galling
criticism of his back-swing. The Scooper, who had always scooped
since the day when, at the age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the
Correspondence Course which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by
mail, resented being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke
should be a smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer--But I need not
weary you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is
enough to say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night,
after dinner, they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done
about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the Scooper.
“Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I? Well, what
more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer. It
is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the man
had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this last
remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And there
was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office--young Parsloe--who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him on
this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer, anxiously.
“It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once went
round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of these
motor-cars then, tearing about and killing--”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the remaining
conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean counting
every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time to
give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand, kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
“Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.
* * * * *
It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good time
and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of the
day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind the
opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve that
night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was proceeding over
the smooth turf without a care in the world, when there was a sudden
cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball, missing him by inches,
sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty yards from where he
stood. He looked round and observed a figure coming towards him from
the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards. Add
fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such drive
had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation, and
such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the hum
of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had been
permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only when
the other man came up that there began to steal over him a sickening
apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on the hotel
course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was a
stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the man
he had agreed to play.
“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth, with
brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er--do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local champion, or
something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the best
man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to happen, he
nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe. The magic had
gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a silly, feeble
way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For Ferdinand’s
inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever, was back again,
doing business at the old stand.
* * * * *
How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on his
lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would unleash
his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her only worry
was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the sacred scene
by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his peculiar
manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet resultant
upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The interpretation
which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to see her. If he had
behaved like this before, she would, of course, have put it down to
ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written statements to prove that
for the last ten days his golf had been one long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it all
now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew how
quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an instant
she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as to let
him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in wrath,
and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on the point
of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell and
conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a certain
level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said yes, it
was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water, and Barbara
said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand said he hoped
it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would be a pity if
it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as the
Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying with
him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest his
heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not have
supposed that anything could have added to his existing depression, but
he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs farther down the
ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful ring in her voice.
Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all was! We never
know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a good patch and are
beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and along comes a George
Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch George
Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s fevered eye he
looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex began to exhibit
symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete at love or golf with a
fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of the movies and considered
himself off his drive when he did a hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung miserably
about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society was not
essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it was
with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after dinner.
Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went early
to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his cup,
could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely into
his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.
* * * * *
Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room. Coming
down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the hotel. It was
her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day like this one
was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the lounge, shut all
the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute industry. To her
surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a cloudless sky, the
only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian with the ear-trumpet.
She observed that he was chuckling to himself in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his acquaintance
on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and getting his
trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio outfit
and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
“What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a crumb
the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she should
have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble--” Here the octogenarian choked
again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t know that
Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist she
appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink. Then her
eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at the back
of the chair. She understood now. She realised why Ferdinand had been
so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him in a spasm of maternal
pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was mumbling,
and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man. For two pins
she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the need for action
roused her. What action? She did not know. All she knew was that she
must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee.
In spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did
not wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the second
nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and now she
could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill that shook
her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So he must have won
one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not going
altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the direction
of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing right on
the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble
had managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth
green, but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient
to cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation--to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives, never
chipped his chip so shrewdly.
About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the
ball. But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the way
round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness and
the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like a young
lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of dejection to be
elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of clear vision,
he perceived the reason why he had been playing so well to-day. It
was just because he was not elated. It was simply because he was so
profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the sixteenth,
after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway, and I am
convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent golfers,
Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for himself by thinking
too much. He was a deep student of the works of the masters, and
whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a complete mental list of
all the mistakes which it was possible to make. He would remember how
Taylor had warned against dipping the right shoulder, how Vardon had
inveighed against any movement of the head; he would recall how Ray had
mentioned the tendency to snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken
sadly of those who sin against their better selves by stiffening the
muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen manner
till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of action, he
eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right shoulder,
stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the same time
raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some Frequent
Faults of Beginners--No. 3--Lifting the Bean”) facing page thirty-four
of James Braid’s _Golf Without Tears_. To-day he had been so
preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots absently,
almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every three had
been a lallapaloosa.
Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was progressing.
George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had been given to
understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-best man, and all
the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives in great profusion,
and had once actually got a four. True, there had been an occasional
six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the main fact that the
man was making the dickens of a game of it. With the haughty spirit of
one who had once done a ninety-four, George Parsloe had anticipated
being at least three up at the turn. Instead of which he had been two
down, and had to fight strenuously to draw level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have won
the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The same
defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in two, with
Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the green with his
fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a distance of seven
yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts just enabled him to
equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first she
had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she approached
the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath. Ferdinand
held his breath. And all around one could see their respective breaths
being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the enthralled crowd
of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest tension, and it was
broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it met the ball and sent
it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty yards. At this supreme
crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and gave
it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the happy
ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before. He would so
drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots to catch up
with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution, poised it at the
top of the swing--
“I always wonder--” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway--” said George Parsloe, in a small, flat
voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees are
called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called greens,
may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth. His
fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he picked
it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been something
venomous.
“Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.
* * * * *
Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried off
the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had spoken
those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that he
had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to sink
again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could hold
nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to his
feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man with
whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight beside
this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water,”
persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played together
as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged to be
married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was thinking
tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If Parsloe’s
engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with _you_.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.
* * * * *
“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,
thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows, while
in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s Wedding
March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just
discovered the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game
unless you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take
the case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you
don’t care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to
see. Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at
the top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll be
fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.
CHAPTER II
HIGH STAKES
The summer day was drawing to a close. Over the terrace outside the
club-house the chestnut trees threw long shadows, and such bees as
still lingered in the flower-beds had the air of tired business men
who are about ready to shut up the office and go off to dinner and a
musical comedy. The Oldest Member, stirring in his favourite chair,
glanced at his watch and yawned.
As he did so, from the neighbourhood of the eighteenth green, hidden
from his view by the slope of the ground, there came suddenly a medley
of shrill animal cries, and he deduced that some belated match must
just have reached a finish. His surmise was correct. The babble of
voices drew nearer, and over the brow of the hill came a little group
of men. Two, who appeared to be the ringleaders in the affair, were
short and stout. One was cheerful and the other dejected. The rest of
the company consisted of friends and adherents; and one of these, a
young man who seemed to be amused, strolled to where the Oldest Member
sat.
“What,” inquired the Sage, “was all the shouting for?”
The young man sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Perkins and Broster,” he said, “were all square at the seventeenth,
and they raised the stakes to fifty pounds. They were both on the green
in seven, and Perkins had a two-foot putt to halve the match. He missed
it by six inches. They play pretty high, those two.”
“It is a curious thing,” said the Oldest Member, “that men whose golf
is of a kind that makes hardened caddies wince always do. The more
competent a player, the smaller the stake that contents him. It is
only when you get down into the submerged tenth of the golfing world
that you find the big gambling. However, I would not call fifty pounds
anything sensational in the case of two men like Perkins and Broster.
They are both well provided with the world’s goods. If you would care
to hear the story--”
The young man’s jaw fell a couple of notches.
“I had no idea it was so late,” he bleated. “I ought to be--”
“--of a man who played for really high stakes--”
“I promised to--”
“--I will tell it to you,” said the Sage.
“Look here,” said the young man, sullenly, “it isn’t one of those
stories about two men who fall in love with the same girl and play a
match to decide which is to marry her, is it? Because if so--”
“The stake to which I allude,” said the Oldest Member, “was something
far higher and bigger than a woman’s love. Shall I proceed?”
“All right,” said the young man, resignedly. “Snap into it.”
* * * * *
It has been well said--I think by the man who wrote the sub-titles for
“Cage-Birds of Society” (began the Oldest Member)--that wealth does not
always bring happiness. It was so with Bradbury Fisher, the hero of
the story which I am about to relate. One of America’s most prominent
tainted millionaires, he had two sorrows in life--his handicap refused
to stir from twenty-four and his wife disapproved of his collection of
famous golf relics. Once, finding him crooning over the trousers in
which Ouimet had won his historic replay against Vardon and Ray in the
American Open, she had asked him why he did not collect something worth
while, like Old Masters or first editions.
Worth while! Bradbury had forgiven, for he loved the woman, but he
could not forget.
For Bradbury Fisher, like so many men who have taken to the game in
middle age, after a youth misspent in the pursuits of commerce, was
no half-hearted enthusiast. Although he still occasionally descended
on Wall Street in order to pry the small investor loose from another
couple of million, what he really lived for now was golf and his
collection. He had begun the collection in his first year as a golfer,
and he prized it dearly. And when he reflected that his wife had
stopped him purchasing J. H. Taylor’s shirt-stud, which he could have
had for a few hundred pounds, the iron seemed to enter into his soul.
The distressing episode had occurred in London, and he was now on his
way back to New York, having left his wife to continue her holiday in
England. All through the voyage he remained moody and distrait; and
at the ship’s concert, at which he was forced to take the chair, he
was heard to observe to the purser that if the alleged soprano who had
just sung “My Little Grey Home in the West” had the immortal gall to
take a second encore he hoped that she would trip over a high note and
dislocate her neck.
* * * * *
Such was Bradbury Fisher’s mood throughout the ocean journey, and it
remained constant until he arrived at his palatial home at Goldenville,
Long Island, where, as he sat smoking a moody after-dinner cigar in the
Versailles drawing-room, Blizzard, his English butler, informed him
that Mr. Gladstone Bott desired to speak to him on the telephone.
“Tell him to go and boil himself,” said Bradbury.
“Very good, sir.”
“No, I’ll tell him myself,” said Bradbury. He strode to the telephone.
“Hullo!” he said curtly.
He was not fond of this Bott. There are certain men who seem fated
to go through life as rivals. It was so with Bradbury Fisher and J.
Gladstone Bott. Born in the same town within a few days of one another,
they had come to New York in the same week; and from that moment their
careers had run side by side. Fisher had made his first million two
days before Bott, but Bott’s first divorce had got half a column and
two sticks more publicity than Fisher’s.
At Sing-Sing, where each had spent several happy years of early
manhood, they had run neck and neck for the prizes which that
institution has to offer. Fisher secured the position of catcher on
the baseball nine in preference to Bott, but Bott just nosed Fisher
out when it came to the choice of a tenor for the glee club. Bott was
selected for the debating contest against Auburn, but Fisher got the
last place on the crossword puzzle team, with Bott merely first reserve.
They had taken up golf simultaneously, and their handicaps had remained
level ever since. Between such men it is not surprising that there was
little love lost.
“Hullo!” said Gladstone Bott. “So you’re back? Say, listen, Fisher. I
think I’ve got something that’ll interest you. Something you’ll be glad
to have in your golf collection.”
Bradbury Fisher’s mood softened. He disliked Bott, but that was no
reason for not doing business with him. And though he had little faith
in the man’s judgment it might be that he had stumbled upon some
valuable antique. There crossed his mind the comforting thought that
his wife was three thousand miles away and that he was no longer under
her penetrating eye--that eye which, so to speak, was always “about his
bath and about his bed and spying out all his ways.”
“I’ve just returned from a trip down South,” proceeded Bott, “and I
have secured the authentic baffy used by Bobby Jones in his first
important contest--the Infants’ All-In Championship of Atlanta,
Georgia, open to those of both sexes not yet having finished teething.”
Bradbury gasped. He had heard rumours that this treasure was in
existence, but he had never credited them.
“You’re sure?” he cried. “You’re positive it’s genuine?”
“I have a written guarantee from Mr. Jones, Mrs. Jones, and the nurse.”
“How much, Bott, old man?” stammered Bradbury. “How much do you want
for it, Gladstone, old top? I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Ha!”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“Ha, ha!”
“A million.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“Two million.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!”
Bradbury Fisher’s strong face twisted like that of a tortured fiend.
He registered in quick succession rage, despair, hate, fury, anguish,
pique, and resentment. But when he spoke again his voice was soft and
gentle.
“Gladdy, old socks,” he said, “we have been friends for years.”
“No, we haven’t,” said Gladstone Bott.
“Yes, we have.”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Well, anyway, what about two million five hundred?”
“Nothing doing. Say, listen. Do you really want that baffy?”
“I do, Botty, old egg, I do indeed.”
“Then listen. I’ll exchange it for Blizzard.”
“For Blizzard?” quavered Fisher.
“For Blizzard.”
It occurs to me that, when describing the closeness of the rivalry
between these two men I may have conveyed the impression that in no
department of life could either claim a definite advantage over
the other. If that is so, I erred. It is true that in a general
way, whatever one had, the other had something equally good to
counterbalance it; but in just one matter Bradbury Fisher had triumphed
completely over Gladstone Bott. Bradbury Fisher had the finest English
butler on Long Island.
Blizzard stood alone. There is a regrettable tendency on the part of
English butlers to-day to deviate more and more from the type which
made their species famous. The modern butler has a nasty nack of being
a lissom young man in perfect condition who looks like the son of the
house. But Blizzard was of the fine old school. Before coming to the
Fisher home he had been for fifteen years in the service of an earl,
and his appearance suggested that throughout those fifteen years he
had not let a day pass without its pint of port. He radiated port and
pop-eyed dignity. He had splay feet and three chins, and when he walked
his curving waistcoat preceded him like the advance guard of some royal
procession.
From the first, Bradbury had been perfectly aware that Bott coveted
Blizzard, and the knowledge had sweetened his life. But this was the
first time he had come out into the open and admitted it.
“Blizzard?” whispered Fisher.
“Blizzard,” said Bott firmly. “It’s my wife’s birthday next week, and
I’ve been wondering what to give her.”
Bradbury Fisher shuddered from head to foot, and his legs wobbled like
asparagus stalks. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. The
serpent was tempting him--tempting him grievously.
“You’re sure you won’t take three million--or four--or something like
that?”
“No; I want Blizzard.”
Bradbury Fisher passed his handkerchief over his streaming brow.
“So be it,” he said in a low voice.
* * * * *
The Jones baffy arrived that night, and for some hours Bradbury Fisher
gloated over it with the unmixed joy of a collector who has secured
the prize of a lifetime. Then, stealing gradually over him, came the
realisation of what he had done.
He was thinking of his wife and what she would say when she heard of
this. Blizzard was Mrs. Fisher’s pride and joy. She had never, like the
poet, nursed a dear gazelle, but, had she done so, her attitude towards
it would have been identical with her attitude towards Blizzard.
Although so far away, it was plain that her thoughts still lingered
with the pleasure she had left at home, for on his arrival Bradbury had
found three cables awaiting him.
The first ran:
“_How is Blizzard? Reply._”
The second:
“_How is Blizzard’s sciatica? Reply._”
The third:
“_Blizzard’s hiccups. How are they? Suggest Doctor Murphy’s Tonic
Swamp-Juice. Highly spoken of. Three times a day after meals. Try for
week and cable result._”
It did not require a clairvoyant to tell Bradbury that, if on her
return she found that he had disposed of Blizzard in exchange for a
child’s cut-down baffy, she would certainly sue him for divorce. And
there was not a jury in America that would not give their verdict in
her favour without a dissentient voice. His first wife, he recalled,
had divorced him on far flimsier grounds. So had his second, third,
and fourth. And Bradbury loved his wife. There had been a time in his
life when, if he lost a wife, he had felt philosophically that there
would be another along in a minute; but, as a man grows older, he tends
to become set in his habits, and he could not contemplate existence
without the company of the present incumbent.
What, therefore, to do? What, when you came right down to it, to do?
There seemed no way out of the dilemma. If he kept the Jones baffy, no
other price would satisfy Bott’s jealous greed. And to part with the
baffy, now that it was actually in his possession, was unthinkable.
And then, in the small hours of the morning, as he tossed sleeplessly
on his Louis Quinze bed, his giant brain conceived a plan.
On the following afternoon he made his way to the club-house, and was
informed that Bott was out playing a round with another millionaire of
his acquaintance. Bradbury waited, and presently his rival appeared.
“Hey!” said Gladstone Bott, in his abrupt, uncouth way. “When are you
going to deliver that butler?”
“I will make the shipment at the earliest date,” said Bradbury.
“I was expecting him last night.”
“You shall have him shortly.”
“What do you feed him on?” asked Gladstone Bott.
“Oh, anything you have yourselves. Put sulphur in his port in the hot
weather. Tell me, how did your match go?”
“He beat me. I had rotten luck.”
Bradbury Fisher’s eyes gleamed. His moment had come.
“Luck?” he said. “What do you mean, luck? Luck has nothing to do with
it. You’re always beefing about your luck. The trouble with you is that
you play rottenly.”
“What!”
“It is no use trying to play golf unless you learn the first principles
and do it properly. Look at the way you drive.”
“What’s wrong with my driving?”
“Nothing, except that you don’t do anything right. In driving, as the
club comes back in the swing, the weight should be shifted by degrees,
quietly and gradually, until, when the club has reached its top-most
point, the whole weight of the body is supported by the right leg, the
left foot being turned at the time and the left knee bent in toward
the right leg. But, regardless of how much you perfect your style, you
cannot develop any method which will not require you to keep your head
still so that you can see your ball clearly.”
“Hey!”
“It is obvious that it is impossible to introduce a jerk or a sudden
violent effort into any part of the swing without disturbing the
balance or moving the head. I want to drive home the fact that it is
absolutely essential to--”
“Hey!” cried Gladstone Bott.
The man was shaken to the core. From the local pro, and from scratch
men of his acquaintance, he would gladly have listened to this sort
of thing by the hour, but to hear these words from Bradbury Fisher,
whose handicap was the same as his own, and out of whom it was his
unperishable conviction that he could hammer the tar any time he got
him out on the links, was too much.
“Where do you get off,” he demanded, heatedly, “trying to teach me
golf?”
Bradbury Fisher chuckled to himself. Everything was working out as his
subtle mind had foreseen.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “I was only speaking for your good.”
“I like your nerve! I can lick you any time we start.”
“It’s easy enough to talk.”
“I trimmed you twice the week before you sailed to England.”
“Naturally,” said Bradbury Fisher, “in a friendly round, with only a
few thousand dollars on the match, a man does not extend himself. You
wouldn’t dare to play me for anything that really mattered.”
“I’ll play you when you like for anything you like.”
“Very well. I’ll play you for Blizzard.”
“Against what?”
“Oh, anything you please. How about a couple of railroads?”
“Make it three.”
“Very well.”
“Next Friday suit you?”
“Sure,” said Bradbury Fisher.
It seemed to him that his troubles were over. Like all twenty-four
handicap men, he had the most perfect confidence in his ability to beat
all other twenty-four handicap men. As for Gladstone Bott, he knew that
he could disembowel him any time he was able to lure him out of the
club-house.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, as he breakfasted on the morning of the fateful match,
Bradbury Fisher was conscious of an unwonted nervousness. He was no
weakling. In Wall Street his phlegm in moments of stress was a by-word.
On the famous occasion when the B. and G. crowd had attacked C. and
D., and in order to keep control of L. and M. he had been compelled to
buy so largely of S. and T., he had not turned a hair. And yet this
morning, in endeavouring to prong up segments of bacon, he twice missed
the plate altogether and on a third occasion speared himself in the
cheek with his fork. The spectacle of Blizzard, so calm, so competent,
so supremely the perfect butler, unnerved him.
“I am jumpy to-day, Blizzard,” he said forcing a laugh.
“Yes, sir. You do, indeed, appear to have the willies.”
“Yes. I am playing a very important golf-match this morning.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“I must pull myself together, Blizzard.”
“Yes, sir. And, if I may respectfully make the suggestion, you should
endeavour, when in action, to keep the head down and the eye rigidly
upon the ball.”
“I will, Blizzard, I will,” said Bradbury Fisher, his keen eyes
clouding under a sudden mist of tears. “Thank you, Blizzard, for the
advice.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“How is your sciatica, Blizzard?”
“A trifle improved, I thank you, sir.”
“And your hiccups?”
“I am conscious of a slight though possibly only a temporary relief,
sir.”
“Good,” said Bradbury Fisher.
He left the room with a firm step; and proceeding to his library, read
for a while portions of that grand chapter in James Braid’s “Advanced
Golf” which deals with driving into the wind. It was a fair and
cloudless morning, but it was as well to be prepared for emergencies.
Then, feeling that he had done all that could be done, he ordered the
car and was taken to the links.
Gladstone Bott was awaiting him on the first tee, in company with two
caddies. A curt greeting, a spin of the coin, and Gladstone Bott,
securing the honour, stepped out to begin the contest.
* * * * *
Although there are, of course, endless sub-species in their ranks, not
all of which have yet been classified by science, twenty-four handicap
golfers may be stated broadly to fall into two classes, the dashing
and the cautious--those, that is to say, who endeavour to do every
hole in a brilliant one and those who are content to win with a steady
nine. Gladstone Bott was one of the cautious brigade. He fussed about
for a few moments like a hen scratching gravel, then with a stiff
quarter-swing sent his ball straight down the fairway for a matter of
seventy yards, and it was Bradbury Fisher’s turn to drive.
Now, normally, Bradbury Fisher was essentially a dasher. It was his
habit, as a rule, to raise his left foot some six inches from the
ground, and having swayed forcefully back on to his right leg, to
sway sharply forward again and lash out with sickening violence in
the general direction of the ball. It was a method which at times
produced excellent results, though it had the flaw that it was somewhat
uncertain. Bradbury Fisher was the only member of the club, with the
exception of the club champion, who had ever carried the second green
with his drive; but, on the other hand, he was also the only member
who had ever laid his drive on the eleventh dead to the pin of the
sixteenth.
But to-day the magnitude of the issues at stake had wrought a change
in him. Planted firmly on both feet, he fiddled at the ball in the
manner of one playing spillikens. When he swung, it was with a swing
resembling that of Gladstone Bott; and, like Bott, he achieved a nice,
steady, rainbow-shaped drive of some seventy yards straight down the
middle. Bott replied with an eighty-yard brassie shot. Bradbury held
him with another. And so, working their way cautiously across the
prairie, they came to the green, where Bradbury, laying his third putt
dead, halved the hole.
The second was a repetition of the first, the third and fourth
repetitions of the second. But on the fifth green the fortunes of the
match began to change. Here Gladstone Bott, faced with a fifteen-foot
putt to win, smote his ball firmly off the line, as had been his
practice at each of the preceding holes, and the ball, hitting a
worm-cast and bounding off to the left, ran on a couple of yards, hit
another worm-cast, bounded to the right, and finally, bumping into a
twig, leaped to the left again and clattered into the tin.
“One up,” said Gladstone Bott. “Tricky, some of these greens are. You
have to gauge the angles to a nicety.”
At the sixth a donkey in an adjoining field uttered a raucous bray just
as Bott was addressing his ball with a mashie-niblick on the edge of
the green. He started violently and, jerking his club with a spasmodic
reflex action of the forearm, holed out.
“Nice work,” said Gladstone Bott.
The seventh was a short hole, guarded by two large bunkers between
which ran a narrow foot-path of turf. Gladstone Bott’s mashie-shot,
falling short, ran over the rough, peered for a moment into the depths
to the left, then, winding up the path, trickled on to the green,
struck a fortunate slope, acquired momentum, ran on, and dropped into
the hole.
“Nearly missed it,” said Gladstone Bott, drawing a deep breath.
* * * * *
Bradbury Fisher looked out upon a world that swam and danced before his
eyes. He had not been prepared for this sort of thing. The way things
were shaping, he felt that it would hardly surprise him now if the cups
were to start jumping up and snapping at Bott’s ball like starving dogs.
“Three up,” said Gladstone Bott.
With a strong effort Bradbury Fisher mastered his feelings. His mouth
set grimly. Matters, he perceived, had reached a crisis. He saw now
that he had made a mistake in allowing himself to be intimidated by
the importance of the occasion into being scientific. Nature had never
intended him for a scientific golfer, and up till now he had been
behaving like an animated illustration out of a book by Vardon. He
had taken his club back along and near the turf, allowing it to trend
around the legs as far as was permitted by the movement of the arms. He
had kept his right elbow close to the side, this action coming into
operation before the club was allowed to describe a section of a circle
in an upward direction, whence it was carried by means of a slow,
steady, swinging movement. He had pivoted, he had pronated the wrists,
and he had been careful about the lateral hip-shift.
And it had been all wrong. That sort of stuff might suit some people,
but not him. He was a biffer, a swatter, and a slosher; and it flashed
upon him now that only by biffing, swatting, and sloshing as he had
never biffed, swatted, and sloshed before could he hope to recover the
ground he had lost.
Gladstone Bott was not one of those players who grow careless with
success. His drive at the eighth was just as steady and short as ever.
But this time Bradbury Fisher made no attempt to imitate him. For seven
holes he had been checking his natural instincts, and now he drove with
all the banked-up fury that comes with release from long suppression.
For an instant he remained poised on one leg like a stork; then there
was a whistle and a crack, and the ball, smitten squarely in the
midriff, flew down the course and, soaring over the bunkers, hit the
turf and gambolled to within twenty yards of the green.
He straightened out the kinks in his spine with a grim smile. Allowing
himself the regulation three putts, he would be down in five, and only
a miracle could give Gladstone Bott anything better than a seven. “Two
down,” he said some minutes later, and Gladstone Bott nodded sullenly.
It was not often that Bradbury Fisher kept on the fairway with two
consecutive drives, but strange things were happening to-day. Not only
was his drive at the ninth a full two hundred and forty yards, but it
was also perfectly straight.
“One down,” said Bradbury Fisher, and Bott nodded even more sullenly
than before.
There are few things more demoralising than to be consistently
outdriven; and when he is outdriven by a hundred and seventy yards at
two consecutive holes the bravest man is apt to be shaken. Gladstone
Bott was only human. It was with a sinking heart that he watched his
opponent heave and sway on the tenth tee; and when the ball once more
flew straight and far down the course a strange weakness seemed to come
over him. For the first time he lost his morale and topped. The ball
trickled into the long grass, and after three fruitless stabs at it
with a niblick he picked up, and the match was squared.
At the eleventh Bradbury Fisher also topped, and his tee-shot, though
nice and straight, travelled only a couple of feet. He had to scramble
to halve in eight.
The twelfth was another short hole; and Bradbury, unable to curb
the fine, careless rapture which had crept into his game, had the
misfortune to over-shoot the green by some sixty yards, thus enabling
his opponent to take the lead once more.
The thirteenth and fourteenth were halved, but Bradbury, driving
another long ball, won the fifteenth, squaring the match.
* * * * *
It seemed to Bradbury Fisher, as he took his stand on the sixteenth
tee, that he now had the situation well in hand. At the thirteenth and
fourteenth his drive had flickered, but on the fifteenth it had come
back in all its glorious vigour and there appeared to be no reason to
suppose that it had not come to stay. He recollected exactly how he
had done that last colossal slosh, and he now prepared to reproduce
the movements precisely as before. The great thing to remember was to
hold the breath on the back-swing and not to release it before the
moment of impact. Also, the eyes should not be closed until late in the
down-swing. All great golfers have their little secrets, and that was
Bradbury’s.
With these aids to success firmly fixed in his mind, Bradbury Fisher
prepared to give the ball the nastiest bang that a golf-ball had ever
had since Edward Blackwell was in his prime. He drew in his breath and,
with lungs expanded to their fullest capacity, heaved back on to his
large, flat right foot. Then, clenching his teeth, he lashed out.
When he opened his eyes, they fell upon a horrid spectacle. Either
he had closed those eyes too soon or else he had breathed too
precipitately--whatever the cause, the ball, which should have gone due
south, was travelling with great speed sou’-sou’-east. And, even as he
gazed, it curved to earth and fell into as uninviting a bit of rough
as he had ever penetrated. And he was a man who had spent much time in
many roughs.
* * * * *
Leaving Gladstone Bott to continue his imitation of a spavined
octogenarian rolling peanuts with a toothpick, Bradbury Fisher,
followed by his caddie, set out on the long trail into the jungle.
Hope did not altogether desert him as he walked. In spite of its
erratic direction, the ball had been so shrewdly smitten that it was
not far from the green. Provided luck was with him and the lie not
too desperate, a mashie would put him on the carpet. It was only when
he reached the rough and saw what had happened that his heart sank.
There the ball lay, half hidden in the grass, while above it waved the
straggling tentacle of some tough-looking shrub. Behind it was a stone,
and behind the stone, at just the elevation required to catch the
back-swing of the club, was a tree. And, by an ironical stroke of fate
which drew from Bradbury a hollow, bitter laugh, only a few feet to the
right was a beautiful smooth piece of turf from which it would have
been a pleasure to play one’s second.
Dully, Bradbury looked round to see how Bott was getting on. And then
suddenly, as he found that Bott was completely invisible behind the
belt of bushes through which he had just passed, a voice seemed to
whisper to him, “Why not?”
Bradbury Fisher, remember, had spent thirty years in Wall Street.
It was at this moment that he realised that he was not alone. His
caddie was standing at his side.
Bradbury Fisher gazed upon the caddie, whom until now he had not had
any occasion to observe with any closeness.
The caddie was not a boy. He was a man, apparently in the middle
forties, with bushy eyebrows and a walrus moustache; and there was
something about his appearance which suggested to Bradbury that here
was a kindred spirit. He reminded Bradbury a little of Spike Huggins,
the safe-blower, who had been a fresher with him at Sing-Sing. It
seemed to him that this caddie could be trusted in a delicate matter
involving secrecy and silence. Had he been some babbling urchin, the
risk might have been too great.
“Caddie,” said Bradbury.
“Sir?” said the caddie.
“Yours is an ill-paid job,” said Bradbury.
“It is, indeed, sir,” said the caddie.
“Would you like to earn fifty dollars?”
“I would prefer to earn a hundred.”
“I meant a hundred,” said Bradbury.
He produced a roll of bills from his pocket, and peeled off one of
that value. Then, stooping, he picked up his ball and placed it on the
little oasis of turf. The caddie bowed intelligently.
“You mean to say,” cried Gladstone Bott, a few moments later, “that you
were out with your second? With your second!”
“I had a stroke of luck.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t about six strokes of luck?”
“My ball was right out in the open in an excellent lie.”
“Oh!” said Gladstone Bott, shortly.
“I have four for it, I think.”
“One down,” said Gladstone Bott.
“And two to play,” trilled Bradbury.
It was with a light heart that Bradbury Fisher teed up on the
seventeenth. The match, he felt, was as good as over. The whole essence
of golf is to discover a way of getting out of rough without losing
strokes; and with this sensible, broad-minded man of the world caddying
for him he seemed to have discovered the ideal way. It cost him
scarcely a pang when he saw his drive slice away into a tangle of long
grass, but for the sake of appearances he affected a little chagrin.
“Tut, tut!” he said.
“I shouldn’t worry,” said Gladstone Bott. “You will probably find it
sitting upon an india-rubber tee which some one has dropped there.”
He spoke sardonically, and Bradbury did not like his manner. But then
he never had liked Gladstone Bott’s manner, so what of that? He made
his way to where the ball had fallen. It was lying under a bush.
“Caddie,” said Bradbury.
“Sir?” said the caddie.
“A hundred?”
“And fifty.”
“And fifty,” said Bradbury Fisher.
Gladstone Bott was still toiling along the fairway when Bradbury
reached the green.
“How many?” he asked, eventually winning to the goal.
“On in two,” said Bradbury. “And you?”
“Playing seven.”
“Then let me see. If you take two putts, which is most unlikely, I
shall have six for the hole and match.”
A minute later Bradbury had picked up his ball out of the cup. He stood
there, basking in the sunshine, his heart glowing with quiet happiness.
It seemed to him that he had never seen the countryside looking so
beautiful. The birds appeared to be singing as they had never sung
before. The trees and the rolling turf had taken on a charm beyond
anything he had ever encountered. Even Gladstone Bott looked almost
bearable.
“A very pleasant match,” he said, cordially, “conducted throughout in
the most sporting spirit. At one time I thought you were going to pull
it off, old man, but there--class will tell.”
“I will now make my report,” said the caddie with the walrus moustache.
“Do so,” said Gladstone Bott, briefly.
Bradbury Fisher stared at the man with blanched cheeks. The sun had
ceased to shine, the birds had stopped singing. The trees and the
rolling turf looked pretty rotten, and Gladstone Bott perfectly foul.
His heart was leaden with a hideous dread.
“Your report? Your--your report? What do you mean?”
“You don’t suppose,” said Gladstone Bott, “that I would play you an
important match unless I had detectives watching you, do you? This
gentleman is from the Quick Results Agency. What have you to report?”
he said, turning to the caddie.
The caddie removed his bushy eyebrows, and with a quick gesture swept
off his moustache.
“On the twelfth inst.,” he began in a monotonous, sing-song voice,
“acting upon instructions received, I made my way to the Goldenville
Golf Links in order to observe the movements of the man Fisher. I had
adopted for the occasion the Number Three disguise and--”
“All right, all right,” said Gladstone Bott, impatiently. “You can skip
all that. Come down to what happened at the sixteenth.”
The caddie looked wounded, but he bowed deferentially.
“At the sixteenth hole the man Fisher moved his ball into what--from
his actions and furtive manner--I deduced to be a more favourable
position.”
“Ah!” said Gladstone Bott.
“On the seventeenth the man Fisher picked up his ball and threw it with
a movement of the wrist on to the green.”
“It’s a lie. A foul and contemptible lie,” shouted Bradbury Fisher.
“Realising that the man Fisher might adopt this attitude, sir,” said
the caddie, “I took the precaution of snapshotting him in the act with
my miniature wrist-watch camera, the detective’s best friend.”
Bradbury Fisher covered his face with his hands and uttered a hollow
groan.
“My match,” said Gladstone Bott, with vindicative triumph. “I’ll
trouble you to deliver that butler to me f.o.b. at my residence not
later than noon to-morrow. Oh yes, and I was forgetting. You owe me
three railroads.”
* * * * *
Blizzard, dignified but kindly, met Bradbury in the Byzantine hall on
his return home.
“I trust your golf-match terminated satisfactorily, sir?” said the
butler.
A pang, almost too poignant to be borne, shot through Bradbury.
“No, Blizzard,” he said. “No. Thank you for your kind inquiry, but I
was not in luck.”
“Too bad, sir,” said Blizzard, sympathetically. “I trust the prize at
stake was not excessive?”
“Well--er--well, it was rather big. I should like to speak to you about
that a little later, Blizzard.”
“At any time that is suitable to you, sir. If you will ring for one of
the assistant-underfootmen when you desire to see me, sir, he will find
me in my pantry. Meanwhile, sir, this cable arrived for you a short
while back.”
Bradbury took the envelope listlessly. He had been expecting a
communication from his London agents announcing that they had bought
Kent and Sussex, for which he had instructed them to make a firm offer
just before he left England. No doubt this was their cable.
He opened the envelope, and started as if it had contained a scorpion.
It was from his wife.
“_Returning immediately ‘Aquitania,’” (it ran). “Docking Friday night.
Meet without fail._”
Bradbury stared at the words, frozen to the marrow. Although he had
been in a sort of trance ever since that dreadful moment on the
seventeenth green, his great brain had not altogether ceased to
function; and, while driving home in the car, he had sketched out
roughly a plan of action which, he felt, might meet the crisis.
Assuming that Mrs. Fisher was to remain abroad for another month, he
had practically decided to buy a daily paper, insert in it a front-page
story announcing the death of Blizzard, forward the clipping to his
wife, and then sell his house and move to another neighbourhood. In
this way it might be that she would never learn of what had occurred.
But if she was due back next Friday, the scheme fell through and
exposure was inevitable.
He wondered dully what had caused her change of plans, and came to the
conclusion that some feminine sixth sense must have warned her of peril
threatening Blizzard. With a good deal of peevishness he wished that
Providence had never endowed women with this sixth sense. A woman with
merely five took quite enough handling.
“Sweet suffering soup-spoons!” groaned Bradbury.
“Sir?” said Blizzard.
“Nothing,” said Bradbury.
“Very good, sir,” said Blizzard.
* * * * *
For a man with anything on his mind, any little trouble calculated to
affect the _joie de vivre_, there are few spots less cheering than the
Customs sheds of New York. Draughts whistle dismally there--now to,
now fro. Strange noises are heard. Customs officials chew gum and lurk
grimly in the shadows, like tigers awaiting the luncheon-gong. It is
not surprising that Bradbury’s spirits, low when he reached the place,
should have sunk to zero long before the gangplank was lowered and the
passengers began to stream down it.
His wife was among the first to land. How beautiful she looked, thought
Bradbury, as he watched her. And, alas, how intimidating. His tastes
had always lain in the direction of spirited women. His first wife
had been spirited. So had his second, third and fourth. And the one
at the moment holding office was perhaps the most spirited of the
whole platoon. For one long instant, as he went to meet her, Bradbury
Fisher was conscious of a regret that he had not married one of those
meek, mild girls who suffer uncomplainingly at their husband’s hands
in the more hectic type of feminine novel. What he felt he could have
done with at the moment was the sort of wife who thinks herself dashed
lucky if the other half of the sketch does not drag her round the
billiard-room by her hair, kicking her the while with spiked shoes.
Three conversational openings presented themselves to him as he
approached her.
“Darling, there is something I want to tell you--”
“Dearest, I have a small confession to make--”
“Sweetheart, I don’t know if by any chance you remember Blizzard, our
butler. Well, it’s like this--”
But, in the event, it was she who spoke first.
“Oh, Bradbury,” she cried, rushing into his arms, “I’ve done the most
awful thing, and you must try to forgive me!”
Bradbury blinked. He had never seen her in this strange mood before. As
she clung to him, she seemed timid, fluttering, and--although a woman
who weighed a full hundred and fifty-seven pounds--almost fragile.
“What is it?” he inquired, tenderly. “Has somebody stolen your jewels?”
“No, no.”
“Have you been losing money at bridge?”
“No, no. Worse than that.”
Bradbury started.
“You didn’t sing ‘My Little Grey Home in the West’ at the ship’s
concert?” he demanded, eyeing her closely.
“No, no! Ah, how can I tell you? Bradbury, look! You see that man over
there?”
Bradbury followed her pointing finger. Standing in an attitude of
negligent dignity beside a pile of trunks under the letter V was a
tall, stout, ambassadorial man, at the very sight of whom, even at
this distance, Bradbury Fisher felt an odd sense of inferiority. His
pendulous cheeks, his curving waistcoat, his protruding eyes, and
the sequence of rolling chins combined to produce in Bradbury that
instinctive feeling of being in the presence of a superior which we
experience when meeting scratch golfers, head-waiters of fashionable
restaurants, and traffic-policemen. A sudden pang of suspicion pierced
him.
“Well?” he said, hoarsely. “What of him?”
“Bradbury, you must not judge me too harshly. We were thrown together
and I was tempted--”
“Woman,” thundered Bradbury Fisher, “who is this man?”
“His name is Vosper.”
“And what is there between you and him, and when did it start, and why
and how and where?”
Mrs. Fisher dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“It was at the Duke of Bootle’s, Bradbury. I was invited there for the
week-end.”
“And this man was there?”
“Yes.”
“Ha! Proceed!”
“The moment I set eyes on him, something seemed to go all over me.”
“Indeed!”
“At first it was his mere appearance. I felt that I had dreamed of
such a man all my life, and that for all these wasted years I had been
putting up with the second-best.”
“Oh, you did, eh? Really? Is that so? You did, did you?” snorted
Bradbury Fisher.
“I couldn’t help it, Bradbury. I know I have always seemed so devoted
to Blizzard, and so I was. But, honestly, there is no comparison
between them--really there isn’t. You should see the way Vosper stood
behind the Duke’s chair. Like a high priest presiding over some mystic
religious ceremony. And his voice when he asks you if you will have
sherry or hock! Like the music of some wonderful organ. I couldn’t
resist him. I approached him delicately, and found that he was willing
to come to America. He had been eighteen years with the Duke, and he
told me he couldn’t stand the sight of the back of his head any longer.
So--”
Bradbury Fisher reeled.
“This man--this Vosper. Who is he?”
“Why, I’m telling you, honey. He was the Duke’s butler, and now he’s
ours. Oh, you know how impulsive I am. Honestly, it wasn’t till we were
half-way across the Atlantic that I suddenly said to myself, ‘What
about Blizzard?’ What am I to do, Bradbury? I simply haven’t the nerve
to fire Blizzard. And yet what will happen when he walks into his
pantry and finds Vosper there? Oh, think, Bradbury, think!”
Bradbury Fisher was thinking--and for the first time in a week without
agony.
“Evangeline,” he said, gravely, “this is awkward.”
“I know.”
“Extremely awkward.”
“I know, I know. But surely you can think of some way out of the
muddle!”
“I may. I cannot promise, but I may.” He pondered deeply. “Ha! I have
it! It is just possible that I may be able to induce Gladstone Bott to
take on Blizzard.”
“Do you really think he would?”
“He may--if I play my cards carefully. At any rate, I will try to
persuade him. For the moment you and Vosper had better remain in New
York, while I go home and put the negotiations in train. If I am
successful, I will let you know.”
“Do try your very hardest.”
“I think I shall be able to manage it. Gladstone and I are old friends,
and he would stretch a point to oblige me. But let this be a lesson to
you, Evangeline.”
“Oh, I will.”
“By the way,” said Bradbury Fisher, “I am cabling my London agents
to-day to instruct them to buy J. H. Taylor’s shirt-stud for my
collection.”
“Quite right, Bradbury darling. And anything else you want in that way
you will get, won’t you?”
“I will,” said Bradbury Fisher.
CHAPTER III
KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER
The young man in the heather-mixture plus fours, who for some time
had been pacing the terrace above the ninth green like an imprisoned
jaguar, flung himself into a chair and uttered a snort of anguish.
“Women,” said the young man, “are the limit.”
The Oldest Member, ever ready to sympathise with youth in affliction,
turned a courteous ear.
“What,” he inquired, “has the sex been pulling on you now?”
“My wife is the best little woman in the world.”
“I can readily believe it.”
“But,” continued the young man, “I would like to bean her with a brick,
and bean her good. I told her, when she wanted to play a round with
me this afternoon, that we must start early, as the days are drawing
in. What did she do? Having got into her things, she decided that she
didn’t like the look of them and made a complete change. She then
powdered her nose for ten minutes. And when finally I got her on to the
first tee, an hour late, she went back into the clubhouse to ’phone to
her dressmaker. It will be dark before we’ve played six holes. If I
had my way, golf-clubs would make a rigid rule that no wife be allowed
to play with her husband.”
The Oldest Member nodded gravely.
“Until this is done,” he agreed, “the millennium cannot but be set
back indefinitely. Although we are told nothing about it, there can be
little doubt that one of Job’s chief trials was that his wife insisted
on playing golf with him. And, as we are on this topic, it may interest
you to hear a story.”
“I have no time to listen to stories now.”
“If your wife is telephoning to her dressmaker, you have ample time,”
replied the Sage. “The story which I am about to relate deals with a
man named Bradbury Fisher--”
“You told me that one.”
“I think not.”
“Yes, you did. Bradbury Fisher was a Wall Street millionaire who had
an English butler named Blizzard, who had been fifteen years with an
earl. Another millionaire coveted Blizzard, and they played a match for
him, and Fisher lost. But, just as he was wondering how he could square
himself with his wife, who valued Blizzard very highly, Mrs. Fisher
turned up from England with a still finer butler named Vosper, who had
been eighteen years with a duke. So all ended happily.”
“Yes,” said the Sage. “You appear to have the facts correctly. The
tale which I am about to relate is a sequel to that story, and runs as
follows:
You say (began the Oldest Member) that all ended happily. That was
Bradbury Fisher’s opinion, too. It seemed to Bradbury in the days that
followed Vosper’s taking of office as though Providence, recognising
his sterling merits, had gone out of its way to smooth the path of life
for him. The weather was fine; his handicap, after remaining stationary
for many years, had begun to decrease; and his old friend Rupert
Worple had just come out of Sing-Sing, where he had been taking a
post-graduate course, and was paying him a pleasant visit at his house
in Goldenville, Long Island.
The only thing, in fact, that militated against Bradbury’s complete
tranquillity was the information he had just received from his wife
that her mother, Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, was about to infest the
home for an indeterminate stay.
Bradbury had never liked his wives’ mothers. His first wife, he
recalled, had had a particularly objectionable mother. So had his
second, third, and fourth. And the present holder of the title appeared
to him to be scratch. She had a habit of sniffing in a significant way
whenever she looked at him, and this can never make for a spirit of
easy comradeship between man and woman. Given a free hand, he would
have tied a brick to her neck and dropped her in the water-hazard
at the second; but, realising that this was but a Utopian dream, he
sensibly decided to make the best of things and to content himself
with jumping out of window whenever she came into a room in which he
happened to be sitting.
His mood, therefore, as he sat in his Louis Quinze library on the
evening on which this story opens, was perfectly contented. And when
there was a knock at the door and Vosper entered, no foreboding came to
warn him that the quiet peace of his life was about to be shattered.
“Might I have a word, sir?” said the butler.
“Certainly, Vosper. What is it?”
Bradbury Fisher beamed upon the man. For the hundredth time, as he eyed
him, he reflected how immeasurably superior he was to the departed
Blizzard. Blizzard had been fifteen years with an earl, and no one
disputes that earls are all very well in their way. But they are
not dukes. About a butler who has served in a ducal household there
is something which cannot be duplicated by one who has passed the
formative years of his butlerhood in humbler surroundings.
“It has to do with Mr. Worple, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Mr. Worple,” said the butler, gravely, “must go. I do not like his
laugh, sir.”
“Eh?”
“It is too hearty, sir. It would not have done for the Duke.”
Bradbury Fisher was an easy-going man, but he belonged to a free race.
For freedom his fathers had fought and, if he had heard the story
correctly, bled. His eyes flashed.
“Oh!” he cried. “Oh, indeed!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is zat so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Bill--”
“My name is Hildebrand, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you, whatever your scarlet name is, that no butler
is going to boss me in my own home. You can darned well go yourself.”
“Very good, sir.”
Vosper withdrew like an ambassador who has received his papers; and
presently there was a noise without like hens going through a hedge,
and Mrs. Fisher plunged in.
“Bradbury,” she cried, “are you mad? Of course Mr. Worple must go if
Vosper says so. Don’t you realise that Vosper will leave us if we don’t
humour him?”
“I should worry about him leaving!”
A strange, set look came into Mrs. Fisher’s face.
“Bradbury,” she said, “if Vosper leaves us, I shall die. And, what is
more, just before dying I shall get a divorce. Yes, I will.”
“But, darling,” gasped Bradbury, “Rupert Worple! Old Rupie Worple!
We’ve been friends all our lives.”
“I don’t care.”
“We were freshers at Sing-Sing together.”
“I don’t care.”
“We were initiated into the same Frat, the dear old Cracka-Bitta-Rock,
on the same day.”
“I don’t care. Heaven has sent me the perfect butler, and I’m not going
to lose him.”
There was a tense silence.
“Ah, well!” said Bradbury Fisher with a deep sigh.
That night he broke the news to Rupert Worple.
“I never thought,” said Rupert Worple sadly, “when we sang together on
the glee-club at the old Alma Mater, that it would ever come to this.”
“Nor I,” said Bradbury Fisher. “But so it must be. You wouldn’t have
done for the Duke, Rupie, you wouldn’t have done for the Duke.”
“Good-bye, Number 8,097,564,” said Rupert Worple in a low voice.
“Good-bye, Number 8,097,565,” whispered Bradbury Fisher.
And with a silent hand-clasp the two friends parted.
* * * * *
With the going of Rupert Worple a grey cloud seemed to settle upon the
glowing radiance of Bradbury Fisher’s life. Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury
duly arrived; and, having given a series of penetrating sniffs as he
greeted her in the entrance-hall, dug herself in and settled down to
what looked like the visit of a lifetime. And then, just as Bradbury’s
cup seemed to be full to overflowing, Mrs. Fisher drew him aside one
evening.
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher. “I have some good news for you.”
“Is your mother leaving?” asked Bradbury eagerly.
“Of course not. I said good news. I am taking up golf again.”
Bradbury Fisher clutched at the arms of his chair, and an ashen pallor
spread itself over his clean-cut face.
“What did you say?” he muttered.
“I’m taking up golf again. Won’t it be nice? We’ll be able to play
together every day.”
Bradbury Fisher shuddered strongly. It was many years since he had
played with his wife, but, like an old wound, the memory of it still
troubled him occasionally.
“It was Vosper’s idea.”
“Vosper!”
A sudden seething fury gripped Bradbury. This pestilent butler was an
absolute home-wrecker. He toyed with the idea of poisoning Vosper’s
port. Surely, if he were to do so, a capable lawyer could smooth things
over and get him off with, at the worst, a nominal fine.
“Vosper says I need exercise. He says he does not like my wheezing.”
“Your what?”
“My wheezing. I do wheeze, you know.”
“Well, so does he.”
“Yes, but a good butler is expected to wheeze. A wheezing woman is
quite a different thing. My wheezing would never have done for the
Duke, Vosper says.”
Bradbury Fisher breathed tensely.
“Ha!” he said.
“I think it’s so nice of him, Bradbury. It shows he has our interests
at heart, just like a faithful old retainer. He says wheezing is an
indication of heightened blood-pressure and can be remedied by gentle
exercise. So we’ll have our first round to-morrow morning, shall we?”
“Just as you say,” said Bradbury dully. “I had a sort of date to make
one of a foursome with three men at the club, but--”
“Oh, you don’t want to play with those silly men any more. It will be
much nicer, just you and I playing together.”
* * * * *
It has always seemed to me a strange and unaccountable thing that
nowadays, when gloom is at such a premium in the world’s literature and
all around us stern young pessimists are bringing home the bacon with
their studies in the greyly grim, no writer has thought of turning his
pen to a realistic portrayal of the golfing wife. No subject could be
more poignant, and yet it has been completely neglected. One can only
suppose that even modern novelists feel that the line should be drawn
somewhere.
Bradbury Fisher’s emotions, as he stood by the first tee watching his
wife prepare to drive off, were far beyond my poor power to describe.
Compared with him at that moment, the hero of a novel of the Middle
West would have seemed almost offensively chirpy. This was the woman he
loved, and she was behaving in a manner that made the iron sink deep
into his soul.
Most women golfers are elaborate wagglers, but none that Bradbury had
ever seen had made quite such a set of Swedish exercises out of the
simple act of laying the clubhead behind the ball and raising it over
the right shoulder. For fully a minute, it seemed to him, Mrs. Fisher
fiddled and pawed at the ball; while Bradbury, realising that there
are eighteen tees on a course and that this Russian Ballet stuff was
consequently going to happen at least seventeen times more, quivered in
agony and clenched his hands till the knuckles stood out white under
the strain. Then she drove, and the ball trickled down the hill into a
patch of rough some five yards distant.
“Tee-hee!” said Mrs. Fisher.
Bradbury uttered a sharp cry. He was married to a golfing giggler.
“What did I do then?”
“God help you, woman,” said Bradbury, “you jerked your head up till I
wonder it didn’t come off at the neck.”
It was at the fourth hole that further evidence was afforded the
wretched man of how utterly a good, pure woman may change her nature
when once she gets out on the links. Mrs. Fisher had played her
eleventh, and, having walked the intervening three yards, was about
to play her twelfth when behind them, grouped upon the tee, Bradbury
perceived two of his fellow-members of the club. Remorse and shame
pierced him.
“One minute, honey,” he said, as his life’s partner took a stranglehold
on her mashie and was about to begin the movements. “We’d better let
these men through.”
“What men?”
“We’re holding up a couple of fellows. I’ll wave to them.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” cried Mrs. Fisher. “The idea!”
“But, darling--”
“Why should they go through us? We started before them.”
“But, pettie--”
“They shall not pass!” said Mrs. Fisher. And, raising her mashie, she
dug a grim divot out of the shrinking turf. With bowed head, Bradbury
followed her on the long, long trail.
The sun was sinking as they came at last to journey’s end.
“How right Vosper is!” said Mrs. Fisher, nestling into the cushions of
the automobile. “I feel ever so much better already.”
“Do you?” said Bradbury wanly. “Do you?”
“We’ll play again to-morrow afternoon,” said his wife.
* * * * *
Bradbury Fisher was a man of steel. He endured for a week. But on the
last day of the week Mrs. Fisher insisted on taking as a companion
on the round Alfred, her pet Airedale. In vain Bradbury spoke of
the Green Committee and their prejudice against dogs on the links.
Mrs. Fisher--and Bradbury, as he heard the ghastly words, glanced
involuntarily up at the summer sky, as if preparing to dodge the
lightning-bolt which could scarcely fail to punish such blasphemy--said
that the Green Committee were a lot of silly, fussy old men, and she
had no patience with them.
So Alfred came along--barking at Bradbury as he endeavoured to
concentrate on the smooth pronation of the wrists, bounding ahead to
frolic round distant players who were shaping for delicate chip-shots,
and getting a deep toe-hold on the turf of each successive green.
Hell, felt Bradbury, must be something like this, and he wished that he
had led a better life.
But that retribution which waits on all, both small and great, who
defy Green Committees had marked Alfred down. Taking up a position
just behind Mrs. Fisher as she began her down swing on the seventh, he
received so shrewd a blow on his right foreleg that with a sharp yelp
he broke into a gallop, raced through a foursome on the sixth green,
and, charging across country, dived head-long into the water-hazard
on the second; where he remained until Bradbury, who had been sent in
pursuit, waded in and fished him out.
Mrs. Fisher came panting up, full of concern.
“What shall we do? The poor little fellow is quite lame. I know, you
can carry him, Bradbury.”
Bradbury Fisher uttered a low, bleating sound. The water had had the
worst effect on the animal. Even when dry, Alfred was always a dog
of powerful scent. Wet, he had become definitely one of the six best
smellers. His aroma had what the advertisement-writers call “strong
memory value.”
“Carry him? To the car, do you mean?”
“Of course not. Round the links. I don’t want to miss a day’s golf. You
can put him down when you play your shots.”
For a long instant Bradbury hesitated. The words “Is zat so?” trembled
on his lips.
“Very well,” he said, swallowing twice.
* * * * *
That night, in his du Barri bedroom, Bradbury Fisher lay sleepless far
into the dawn. A crisis, he realised, had come in his domestic affairs.
Things, he saw clearly, could not go on like this. It was not merely
the awful spiritual agony of playing these daily rounds of golf with
his wife that was so hard to endure. The real trouble was that the
spectacle of her on the links was destroying his ideals, sapping away
that love and respect which should have been as imperishable as steel.
To a good man his wife should be a goddess, a being far above him to
whom he can offer worship and reverence, a beacon-star guiding him over
the tossing seas of life. She should be ever on a pedestal and in a
shrine. And when she waggles for a minute and a half and then jerks her
head and tops the ball, she ceases to be so. And Mrs. Fisher was not
merely a head-lifter and a super-waggler; she was a scoffer at Golf’s
most sacred things. She held up scratch-men. She omitted to replace
divots. She spoke lightly of Green Committees.
The sun was gilding Goldenville in its morning glory when Bradbury
made up his mind. He would play with her no more. To do so would be
fair neither to himself nor to her. At any moment, he felt, she might
come out on the links in high heels or stop to powder her nose on the
green while frenzied foursomes waited to play their approach-shots.
And then love would turn to hate, and he and she would go through life
estranged. Better to end it now, while he still retained some broken
remains of the old esteem.
He had got everything neatly arranged. He would plead business in the
City and sneak off each day to play on another course five miles away.
“Darling,” he said at breakfast, “I’m afraid we shan’t be able to have
our game for a week or so. I shall have to be at the office early and
late.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Mrs. Fisher.
“You will, no doubt, be able to get a game with the pro or somebody.
You know how bitterly this disappoints me. I had come to look on our
daily round as the bright spot of the day. But business is business.”
“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. Lora Smith
Maplebury, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.
Bradbury Fisher looked at her coldly. She was a lean, pale-eyed woman
with high cheek-bones, and for the hundredth time since she had come
into his life he felt how intensely she needed a punch on the nose.
“Not altogether,” he said. “I still retain large interests in this
and that, and I am at the moment occupied with affairs which I cannot
mention without revealing secrets which might--which would--which
are--Well, anyway, I’ve got to go to the office.”
“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What do you mean, quite?” demanded Bradbury.
“I mean just what I say. Quite!”
“Why quite?”
“Why not quite? I suppose I can say ‘Quite!’ can’t I?”
“Oh, quite,” said Bradbury.
He kissed his wife and left the room. He felt a little uneasy. There
had been something in the woman’s manner which had caused him a vague
foreboding.
Had he been able to hear the conversation that followed his departure,
he would have been still more uneasy.
“Suspicious!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What is?” asked Mrs. Fisher.
“That man’s behaviour.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you observe him closely while he was speaking?”
“No.”
“The tip of his nose wiggled. Always distrust a man who wiggles the tip
of his nose.”
“I am sure Bradbury would not deceive you.”
“So am I. But he might try to.”
“I don’t understand, mother. Do you mean you think Bradbury is not
going to the office?”
“I am sure he is not.”
“You think--?”
“I do.”
“You are suggesting--?”
“I am.”
“You would imply--?”
“I would.”
A moan escaped Mrs. Fisher.
“Oh, mother, mother!” she cried. “If I thought Bradbury was untrue to
me, what I wouldn’t do to that poor clam!”
“I certainly think that the least you can do, as a good womanly woman,
is to have a capable lawyer watching your interests.”
“But we can easily find out if he is at the office. We can ring them up
on the ’phone and ask.”
“And be told that he is in conference. He will not have neglected to
arrange for that.”
“Then what shall I do?”
“Wait,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Wait and be watchful.”
The shades of night were falling when Bradbury returned to his home.
He was fatigued but jubilant. He had played forty-five holes in the
society of his own sex. He had kept his head down and his eye on the
ball. He had sung negro spirituals in the locker-room.
“I trust, Bradbury,” said Mrs. Maplebury, “that you are not tired after
your long day?”
“A little,” said Bradbury. “Nothing to signify.” He turned radiantly to
his wife.
“Honey,” he said, “you remember the trouble I was having with my iron?
Well, to-day--”
He stopped aghast. Like every good husband it had always been his
practice hitherto to bring his golfing troubles to his wife, and in
many a cosy after-dinner chat he had confided to her the difficulty he
was having in keeping his iron-shots straight. And he had only just
stopped himself now from telling her that to-day he had been hitting
’em sweetly on the meat right down the middle.
“Your iron?”
“Er--ah--yes. I have large interests in Iron--as also in Steel, Jute,
Woollen Fabrics, and Consolidated Peanuts. A gang has been trying to
hammer down my stock. To-day I fixed them.”
“You did, did you?” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“I said I did,” retorted Bradbury, defiantly.
“So did I. I said you did, did you?”
“What do you mean, did you?”
“Well, you did, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Exactly what I said. You did. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Yes, you did!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
Once again Bradbury felt vaguely uneasy. There was nothing in the
actual dialogue which had just taken place to cause him alarm--indeed,
considered purely as dialogue, it was bright and snappy and well
calculated to make things gay about the home. But once more there had
been a subtle something in his mother-in-law’s manner which had jarred
upon him. He mumbled and went off to dress for dinner.
“Ha!” said Mrs. Maplebury, as the door closed.
* * * * *
Such, then, was the position of affairs in the Fisher home. And now
that I have arrived thus far in my story and have shown you this man
systematically deceiving the woman he had vowed--at one of the most
exclusive altars in New York--to love and cherish, you--if you are
the sort of husband I hope you are--must be saying to yourself: “But
what of Bradbury Fisher’s conscience?” Remorse, you feel, must long
since have begun to gnaw at his vitals; and the thought suggests
itself to you that surely by this time the pangs of self-reproach must
have interfered seriously with his short game, even if not as yet
sufficiently severe to affect his driving off the tee.
You are overlooking the fact that Bradbury Fisher’s was the trained
and educated conscience of a man who had passed a large portion of his
life in Wall Street; and years of practice had enabled him to reduce
the control of it to a science. Many a time in the past, when an
active operator on the Street, he had done things to the Small Investor
which would have caused raised eyebrows in the fo’c’sle of a pirate
sloop--and done them without a blush. He was not the man, therefore, to
suffer torment merely because he was slipping one over on the Little
Woman.
Occasionally he would wince a trifle at the thought of what would
happen if she ever found out; but apart from that, I am doing no more
than state the plain truth when I say that Bradbury Fisher did not care
a whoop.
Besides, at this point his golf suddenly underwent a remarkable
improvement. He had always been a long driver, and quite abruptly he
found that he was judging them nicely with the putter. Two weeks after
he had started on his campaign of deception he amazed himself and all
who witnessed the performance by cracking a hundred for the first
time in his career. And every golfer knows that in the soul of the
man who does that there is no room for remorse. Conscience may sting
the player who is going round in a hundred and ten, but when it tries
to make itself unpleasant to the man who is doing ninety-sevens and
ninety-eights, it is simply wasting its time.
I will do Bradbury Fisher justice. He did regret that he was not in a
position to tell his wife all about that first ninety-nine of his. He
would have liked to take her into a corner and show her with the aid
of a poker and a lump of coal just how he had chipped up to the pin on
the last hole and left himself a simple two-foot putt. And the forlorn
feeling of being unable to confide his triumphs to a sympathetic ear
deepened a week later when, miraculously achieving ninety-six in
the medal round, he qualified for the sixth sixteen in the annual
invitation tournament of the club to which he had attached himself.
“Shall I?” he mused, eyeing her wistfully across the Queen Anne table
in the Crystal Boudoir, to which they had retired to drink their
after-dinner coffee. “Better not, better not,” whispered Prudence in
his ear.
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher.
“Yes, darling?”
“Have you been hard at work to-day?”
“Yes, precious. Very, very hard at work.”
“Ho!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What did you say?” said Bradbury.
“I said ho!”
“What do you mean, ho?”
“Just ho. There is no harm, I imagine, in my saying ho, if I wish to.”
“Oh, no,” said Bradbury. “By all means. Not at all. Pray do so.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Ho!”
“You do have to slave at the office, don’t you?” said Mrs. Fisher.
“I do, indeed.”
“It must be a great strain.”
“A terrible strain. Yes, yes, a terrible strain.”
“Then you won’t object to giving it up, will you?”
Bradbury started.
“Giving it up?”
“Giving up going to the office. The fact is, dear,” said Mrs. Fisher,
“Vosper has complained.”
“What about?”
“About you going to the office. He says he has never been in the
employment of any one engaged in commerce, and he doesn’t like it. The
Duke looked down on commerce very much. So I’m afraid, darling, you
will have to give it up.”
Bradbury Fisher stared before him, a strange singing in his ears. The
blow had been so sudden that he was stunned.
His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to
the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could
he sneak away from home? And sneak he must, for to-morrow and the day
after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds
for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not
be there. He must be there. He had done a ninety-six, and the next
best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first
time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and,
highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be
compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four handicap man who
sees himself within reach of a cup.
Blindly he tottered from the room and sought his study. He wanted to be
alone. He had to think, think.
The evening paper was lying on the table. Automatically he picked it up
and ran his eye over the front page. And, as he did so, he uttered a
sharp exclamation.
He leaped from his chair and returned to the boudoir, carrying the
paper.
“Well, what do you know about this?” said Bradbury Fisher, in a hearty
voice.
“We know a great deal about a good many things,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What is it, Bradbury?” said Mrs. Fisher.
“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you for a couple of days. Great
nuisance, but there it is. But, of course, I must be there.”
“Where?”
“Ah, where?” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“At Sing-Sing. I see in the paper that to-morrow and the day after they
are inaugurating the new Osborne Stadium. All the men of my class will
be attending, and I must go, too.”
“Must you really?”
“I certainly must. Not to do so would be to show a lack of college
spirit. The boys are playing Yale, and there is to be a big dinner
afterwards. I shouldn’t wonder if I had to make a speech. But don’t
worry, honey,” he said, kissing his wife affectionately. “I shall be
back before you know I’ve gone.” He turned sharply to Mrs. Maplebury.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, stiffly.
“I did not speak.”
“I thought you did.”
“I merely inhaled. I simply drew in air through my nostrils. If I am
not at liberty to draw in air through my nostrils in your house, pray
inform me.”
“I would prefer that you didn’t,” said Bradbury, between set teeth.
“Then I would suffocate.”
“Yes,” said Bradbury Fisher.
* * * * *
Of all the tainted millionaires who, after years of plundering the
widow and the orphan, have devoted the evening of their life to the
game of golf, few can ever have been so boisterously exhilarated as
was Bradbury Fisher when, two nights later, he returned to his home.
His dreams had all come true. He had won his way to the foot of the
rain-bow. In other words, he was the possessor of a small pewter cup,
value three dollars, which he had won by beating a feeble old gentleman
with one eye in the final match of the competition for the sixth
sixteen at the Squashy Hollow Golf Club Invitation Tournament.
He entered the house, radiant.
“Tra-la!” sang Bradbury Fisher. “Tra-la!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Vosper, who had encountered him in the
hall.
“Eh? Oh, nothing. Just tra-la.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bradbury Fisher looked at Vosper. For the first time it seemed to sweep
over him like a wave that Vosper was an uncommonly good fellow. The
past was forgotten, and he beamed upon Vosper like the rising sun.
“Vosper,” he said, “what wages are you getting?”
“I regret to say, sir,” replied the butler, “that, at the moment, the
precise amount of the salary of which I am in receipt has slipped my
mind. I could refresh my memory by consulting my books, if you so
desire it, sir.”
“Never mind. Whatever it is, it’s doubled.”
“I am obliged, sir. You will, no doubt, send me a written memo, to that
effect?”
“Twenty, if you like.”
“One will be ample, sir.”
Bradbury curveted past him through the baronial hall and into the
Crystal Boudoir. His wife was there alone.
“Mother has gone to bed,” she said. “She has a bad headache.”
“You don’t say!” said Bradbury. It was as if everything was conspiring
to make this a day of days. “Well, it’s great to be back in the old
home.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“Capital.”
“You saw all your old friends?”
“Every one of them.”
“Did you make a speech at the dinner?”
“Did I! They rolled out of their seats and the waiters swept them up
with dusters.”
“A very big dinner, I suppose?”
“Enormous.”
“How was the football game?”
“Best I’ve ever seen. We won. Number 432,986 made a
hundred-and-ten-yard run for a touch-down in the last five minutes.”
“Really?”
“And that takes a bit of doing, with a ball and chain round your ankle,
believe me!”
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “where have you been these last two days?”
Bradbury’s heart missed a beat. His wife was looking exactly like her
mother. It was the first time he had ever been able to believe that she
could be Mrs. Maplebury’s daughter.
“Been? Why, I’m telling you.”
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “just one word. Have you seen the paper
this morning?”
“Why, no. What with all the excitement of meeting the boys and this and
that--”
“Then you have not seen that the inauguration of the new Stadium at
Sing-Sing was postponed on account of an outbreak of mumps in the
prison?”
Bradbury gulped.
“There was no dinner, no football game, no gathering of Old
Grads--nothing! So--where have you been, Bradbury?”
Bradbury gulped again.
“You’re sure you haven’t got this wrong?” he said at length.
“Quite.”
“I mean, sure it wasn’t some other place?”
“Quite.”
“Sing-Sing? You got the name correctly?”
“Quite. Where, Bradbury, have you been these last two days?”
“Well--er--”
Mrs. Fisher coughed dryly.
“I merely ask out of curiosity. The facts will, of course, come out in
court.”
“In court!”
“Naturally I propose to place this affair in the hands of my lawyer
immediately.”
Bradbury started convulsively.
“You mustn’t!”
“I certainly shall.”
A shudder shook Bradbury from head to foot. He felt worse than he had
done when his opponent in the final had laid him a stymie on the last
green, thereby squaring the match and taking it to the nineteenth hole.
“I will tell you all,” he muttered.
“Well?”
“Well--it was like this.”
“Yes?”
“Er--like this. In fact, this way.”
“Proceed.”
Bradbury clenched his hands; and, as far as that could be managed,
avoided her eye.
“I’ve been playing golf,” he said in a low, toneless voice.
“Playing golf?”
“Yes.” Bradbury hesitated. “I don’t mean it in an offensive spirit,
and no doubt most men would have enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but
I--well, I am curiously constituted, angel, and the fact is I simply
couldn’t stand playing with you any longer. The fault, I am sure, was
mine, but--well, there it is. If I had played another round with you,
my darling, I think that I should have begun running about in circles,
biting my best friends. So I thought it all over, and, not wanting to
hurt your feelings by telling you the truth, I stooped to what I might
call a ruse. I said I was going to the office; and, instead of going to
the office, I went off to Squashy Hollow and played there.”
Mrs. Fisher uttered a cry.
“You were there to-day and yesterday?”
In spite of his trying situation, the yeasty exhilaration which had
been upon him when he entered the room returned to Bradbury.
“Was I!” he cried. “You bet your Russian boots I was! Only winning a
cup, that’s all!”
“You won a cup?”
“You bet your diamond tiara I won a cup. Say, listen,” said Bradbury,
diving for a priceless Boule table and wrenching a leg off it. “Do you
know what happened in the semi-final?” He clasped his fingers over the
table-leg in the overlapping grip. “I’m here, see, about fifteen feet
off the green. The other fellow lying dead, and I’m playing the like.
Best I could hope for was a half, you’ll say, eh? Well, listen. I just
walked up to that little white ball, and I gave it a little flick, and,
believe me or believe me not, that little white ball never stopped
running till it plunked into the hole.”
He stopped. He perceived that he had been introducing into the debate
extraneous and irrelevant matter.
“Honey,” he said, fervently, “you musn’t get mad about this. Maybe, if
we try again, it will be all right. Give me another chance. Let me come
out and play a round to-morrow. I think perhaps your style of play is
a thing that wants getting used to. After all, I didn’t like olives
the first time I tried them. Or whisky. Or caviare, for that matter.
Probably if--”
Mrs. Fisher shook her head.
“I shall never play again.”
“Oh, but, listen--”
She looked at him fondly, her eyes dim with happy tears.
“I should have known you better, Bradbury. I suspected you. How foolish
I was.”
“There, there,” said Bradbury.
“It was mother’s fault. She put ideas into my head.”
There was much that Bradbury would have liked to say about her mother,
but he felt that this was not the time.
“And you really forgive me for sneaking off and playing at Squashy
Hollow?”
“Of course.”
“Then why not a little round to-morrow?”
“No, Bradbury, I shall never play again. Vosper says I mustn’t.”
“What!”
“He saw me one morning on the links, and he came to me and told
me--quite nicely and respectfully--that it must not occur again. He
said with the utmost deference that I was making a spectacle of myself
and that this nuisance must now cease. So I gave it up. But it’s all
right. Vosper thinks that gentle massage will cure my wheezing, so
I’m having it every day, and really I do think there’s an improvement
already.”
“Where is Vosper?” said Bradbury, hoarsely.
“You aren’t going to be rude to him, Bradbury? He is so sensitive.”
But Bradbury Fisher had left the room.
* * * * *
“You rang, sir?” said Vosper, entering the Byzantine smoking-room some
few minutes later.
“Yes,” said Bradbury. “Vosper, I am a plain, rugged man and I do not
know all that there is to be known about these things. So do not be
offended if I ask you a question.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Tell me, Vosper, did the Duke ever shake hands with you?”
“Once only, sir--mistaking me in a dimly-lit hall for a visiting
archbishop.”
“Would it be all right for me to shake hands with you now?”
“If you wish it, sir, certainly.”
“I want to thank you, Vosper. Mrs. Fisher tells me that you have
stopped her playing golf. I think that you have saved my reason,
Vosper.”
“That is extremely gratifying, sir.”
“Your salary is trebled.”
“Thank you very much, sir. And, while we are talking, sir, if I
might--. There is one other little matter I wished to speak of, sir.”
“Shoot, Vosper.”
“It concerns Mrs. Maplebury, sir.”
“What about her?”
“If I might say so, sir, she would scarcely have done for the Duke.”
A sudden wild thrill shot through Bradbury.
“You mean--?” he stammered.
“I mean, sir, that Mrs. Maplebury must go. I make no criticism of
Mrs. Maplebury, you will understand, sir. I merely say that she would
decidedly not have done for the Duke.”
Bradbury drew in his breath sharply.
“Vosper,” he said, “the more I hear of that Duke of yours, the more I
seem to like him. You really think he would have drawn the line at Mrs.
Maplebury?”
“Very firmly, sir.”
“Splendid fellow! Splendid fellow! She shall go to-morrow, Vosper.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“And, Vosper.”
“Sir?”
“Your salary. It is quadrupled.”
“I am greatly obliged, sir.”
“Tra-la, Vosper!”
“Tra-la, sir. Will that be all?”
“That will be all. Tra-la!”
“Tra-la, sir,” said the butler.
CHAPTER IV
CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF
The afternoon was warm and heavy. Butterflies loafed languidly in the
sunshine, birds panted in the shady recesses of the trees.
The Oldest Member, snug in his favourite chair, had long since
succumbed to the drowsy influence of the weather. His eyes were closed,
his chin sunk upon his breast. The pipe which he had been smoking lay
beside him on the turf, and ever and anon there proceeded from him a
muffled snore.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. There was a sharp, cracking sound as
of splitting wood. The Oldest Member sat up, blinking. As soon as his
eyes had become accustomed to the glare, he perceived that a foursome
had holed out on the ninth and was disintegrating. Two of the players
were moving with quick, purposeful steps in the direction of the side
door which gave entrance to the bar; a third was making for the road
that led to the village, bearing himself as one in profound dejection;
the fourth came on to the terrace.
“Finished?” said the Oldest Member.
The other stopped, wiping a heated brow. He lowered himself into the
adjoining chair and stretched his legs out.
“Yes. We started at the tenth. Golly, I’m tired. No joke playing in
this weather.”
“How did you come out?”
“We won on the last green. Jimmy Fothergill and I were playing the
vicar and Rupert Blake.”
“What was that sharp, cracking sound I heard?” asked the Oldest Member.
“That was the vicar smashing his putter. Poor old chap, he had rotten
luck all the way round, and it didn’t seem to make it any better for
him that he wasn’t able to relieve his feelings in the ordinary way.”
“I suspected some such thing,” said the Oldest Member, “from the look
of his back as he was leaving the green. His walk was the walk of an
overwrought soul.”
His companion did not reply. He was breathing deeply and regularly.
“It is a moot question,” proceeded the Oldest Member, thoughtfully,
“whether the clergy, considering their peculiar position, should not
be more liberally handicapped at golf than the laymen with whom they
compete. I have made a close study of the game since the days of the
feather ball, and I am firmly convinced that to refrain entirely from
oaths during a round is almost equivalent to giving away three bisques.
There are certain occasions when an oath seems to be so imperatively
demanded that the strain of keeping it in must inevitably affect
the ganglions or nerve-centres in such a manner as to diminish the
steadiness of the swing.”
The man beside him slipped lower down in his chair. His mouth had
opened slightly.
“I am reminded in this connection,” said the Oldest Member, “of the
story of young Chester Meredith, a friend of mine whom you have not, I
think, met. He moved from this neighbourhood shortly before you came.
There was a case where a man’s whole happiness was very nearly wrecked
purely because he tried to curb his instincts and thwart nature in this
very respect. Perhaps you would care to hear the story?”
A snore proceeded from the next chair.
“Very well, then,” said the Oldest Member, “I will relate it.”
* * * * *
Chester Meredith (said the Oldest Member) was one of the nicest young
fellows of my acquaintance. We had been friends ever since he had come
to live here as a small boy, and I had watched him with a fatherly eye
through all the more important crises of a young man’s life. It was
I who taught him to drive, and when he had all that trouble in his
twenty-first year with shanking his short approaches, it was to me that
he came for sympathy and advice. It was an odd coincidence, therefore,
that I should have been present when he fell in love.
I was smoking my evening cigar out here and watching the last couples
finishing their rounds, when Chester came out of the club-house and
sat by me. I could see that the boy was perturbed about something, and
wondered why, for I knew that he had won his match.
“What,” I inquired, “is on your mind?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Chester. “I was only thinking that there are some
human misfits who ought not be allowed on any decent links.”
“You mean--?”
“The Wrecking Crew,” said Chester, bitterly. “They held us up all the
way round, confound them. Wouldn’t let us through. What can you do with
people who don’t know enough of the etiquette of the game to understand
that a single has right of way over a four-ball foursome? We had to
loaf about for hours on end while they scratched at the turf like a
lot of crimson hens. Eventually all four of them lost their balls
simultaneously at the eleventh and we managed to get by. I hope they
choke.”
I was not altogether surprised at his warmth. The Wrecking Crew
consisted of four retired business men who had taken up the noble game
late in life because their doctors had ordered them air and exercise.
Every club, I suppose, has a cross of this kind to bear, and it
was not often that our members rebelled; but there was undoubtedly
something particularly irritating in the methods of the Wrecking Crew.
They tried so hard that it seemed almost inconceivable that they should
be so slow.
“They are all respectable men,” I said, “and were, I believe, highly
thought of in their respective businesses. But on the links I admit
that they are a trial.”
“They are the direct lineal descendants of the Gadarene swine,” said
Chester firmly. “Every time they come out I expect to see them rush
down the hill from the first tee and hurl themselves into the lake at
the second. Of all the--”
“Hush!” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye I had seen a girl approaching, and I was
afraid lest Chester in his annoyance might use strong language. For he
was one of those golfers who are apt to express themselves in moments
of emotion with a good deal of generous warmth.
“Eh?” said Chester.
I jerked my head, and he looked round. And, as he did so, there came
into his face an expression which I had seen there only once before,
on the occasion when he won the President’s Cup on the last green by
holing a thirty-yard chip with his mashie. It was a look of ecstasy and
awe. His mouth was open, his eyebrows raised, and he was breathing
heavily through his nose.
“Golly!” I heard him mutter.
The girl passed by. I could not blame Chester for staring at her. She
was a beautiful young thing, with a lissom figure and a perfect face.
Her hair was a deep chestnut, her eyes blue, her nose small and laid
back with about as much loft as a light iron. She disappeared, and
Chester, after nearly dislocating his neck trying to see her round the
corner of the club-house, emitted a deep, explosive sigh.
“Who is she?” he whispered.
I could tell him that. In one way and another I get to know most things
around this locality.
“She is a Miss Blakeney. Felicia Blakeney. She has come to stay for
a month with the Waterfields. I understand she was at school with
Jane Waterfield. She is twenty-three, has a dog named Joseph, dances
well, and dislikes parsnips. Her father is a distinguished writer on
sociological subjects; her mother is Wilmot Royce, the well-known
novelist, whose last work, _Sewers of the Soul_, was, you may recall,
jerked before a tribunal by the Purity League. She has a brother,
Crispin Blakeney, an eminent young reviewer and essayist, who is now in
India studying local conditions with a view to a series of lectures.
She only arrived here yesterday, so this is all I have been able to
find out about her as yet.”
Chester’s mouth was still open when I began speaking. By the time I had
finished it was open still wider. The ecstatic look in his eyes had
changed to one of dull despair.
“My God!” he muttered. “If her family is like that, what chance is
there for a rough-neck like me?”
“You admire her?”
“She is the alligator’s Adam’s apple,” said Chester, simply.
I patted his shoulder.
“Have courage, my boy,” I said. “Always remember that the love of a
good man, to whom the pro can give only a couple of strokes in eighteen
holes is not to be despised.”
“Yes, that’s all very well. But this girl is probably one solid mass of
brain. She will look on me as an uneducated wart-hog.”
“Well, I will introduce you, and we will see. She looked a nice girl.”
“You’re a great describer, aren’t you?” said Chester. “A wonderful
flow of language you’ve got, I don’t think! Nice girl! Why, she’s the
only girl in the world. She’s a pearl among women. She’s the most
marvellous, astounding, beautiful, heavenly thing that ever drew
perfumed breath.” He paused, as if his train of thought had been
interrupted by an idea. “Did you say that her brother’s name was
Crispin?”
“I did. Why?”
Chester gave vent to a few manly oaths.
“Doesn’t that just show you how things go in this rotten world?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was at school with him.”
“Surely that should form a solid basis for friendship?”
“Should it? Should it, by gad? Well, let me tell you that I probably
kicked that blighted worm Crispin Blakeney a matter of seven hundred
and forty-six times in the few years I knew him. He was the world’s
worst. He could have walked straight into the Wrecking Crew and no
questions asked. Wouldn’t it jar you? I have the luck to know her
brother, and it turns out that we couldn’t stand the sight of each
other.”
“Well, there is no need to tell her that.”
“Do you mean--?” He gazed at me wildly. “Do you mean that I might
pretend we were pals?”
“Why not? Seeing that he is in India, he can hardly contradict you.”
“My gosh!” He mused for a moment. I could see that the idea was
beginning to sink in. It was always thus with Chester. You had to give
him time. “By Jove, it mightn’t be a bad scheme at that. I mean, it
would start me off with a rush, like being one up on bogey in the first
two. And there’s nothing like a good start. By gad, I’ll do it.”
“I should.”
“Reminiscences of the dear old days when we were lads together, and all
that sort of thing.”
“Precisely.”
“It isn’t going to be easy, mind you,” said Chester, meditatively.
“I’ll do it because I love her, but nothing else in this world would
make me say a civil word about the blister. Well, then, that’s settled.
Get on with the introduction stuff, will you? I’m in a hurry.”
One of the privileges of age is that it enables a man to thrust his
society on a beautiful girl without causing her to draw herself up and
say “Sir!” It was not difficult for me to make the acquaintance of Miss
Blakeney, and, this done, my first act was to unleash Chester on her.
“Chester,” I said, summoning him as he loafed with an overdone
carelessness on the horizon, one leg almost inextricably entwined about
the other, “I want you to meet Miss Blakeney. Miss Blakeney, this is
my young friend Chester Meredith. He was at school with your brother
Crispin. You were great friends, were you not?”
“Bosom,” said Chester, after a pause.
“Oh, really?” said the girl. There was a pause. “He is in India now.”
“Yes,” said Chester.
There was another pause.
“Great chap,” said Chester, gruffly.
“Crispin is very popular,” said the girl, “with some people.”
“Always been my best pal,” said Chester.
“Yes?”
I was not altogether satisfied with the way matters were developing.
The girl seemed cold and unfriendly, and I was afraid that this was due
to Chester’s repellent manner. Shyness, especially when complicated
by love at first sight, is apt to have strange effects on a man, and
the way it had taken Chester was to make him abnormally stiff and
dignified. One of the most charming things about him, as a rule, was
his delightful boyish smile. Shyness had caused him to iron this out
of his countenance till no trace of it remained. Not only did he not
smile, he looked like a man who never had smiled and never would. His
mouth was a thin, rigid line. His back was stiff with what appeared to
be contemptuous aversion. He looked down his nose at Miss Blakeney as
if she were less than the dust beneath his chariot-wheels.
I thought the best thing to do was to leave them alone together to get
acquainted. Perhaps, I thought, it was my presence that was cramping
Chester’s style. I excused myself and receded.
* * * * *
It was some days before I saw Chester again. He came round to my
cottage one night after dinner and sank into a chair, where he
remained silent for several minutes.
“Well?” I said at last.
“Eh?” said Chester, starting violently.
“Have you been seeing anything of Miss Blakeney lately?”
“You bet I have.”
“And how do you feel about her on further acquaintance?”
“Eh?” said Chester, absently.
“Do you still love her?”
Chester came out of his trance.
“Love her?” he cried, his voice vibrating with emotion. “Of course I
love her. Who wouldn’t love her? I’d be a silly chump not loving her.
Do you know,” the boy went on, a look in his eyes like that of some
young knight seeing the Holy Grail in a vision, “do you know, she is
the only woman I ever met who didn’t overswing. Just a nice, crisp,
snappy, half-slosh, with a good full follow-through. And another thing.
You’ll hardly believe me, but she waggles almost as little as George
Duncan. You know how women waggle as a rule, fiddling about for a
minute and a half like kittens playing with a ball of wool. Well, she
just makes one firm pass with the club and then _bing!_ There is none
like her, none.”
“Then you have been playing golf with her?”
“Nearly every day.”
“How is your game?”
“Rather spotty. I seem to be mistiming them.”
I was concerned.
“I do hope, my dear boy,” I said, earnestly, “that you are taking care
to control your feelings when out on the links with Miss Blakeney. You
know what you are like. I trust you have not been using the sort of
language you generally employ on occasions when you are not timing them
right?”
“Me?” said Chester, horrified. “Who, me? You don’t imagine for a moment
that I would dream of saying a thing that would bring a blush to her
dear cheek, do you? Why, a bishop could have gone round with me and
learned nothing new.”
I was relieved.
“How do you find you manage the dialogue these days?” I asked. “When
I introduced you, you behaved--you will forgive an old friend for
criticising--you behaved a little like a stuffed frog with laryngitis.
Have things got easier in that respect?”
“Oh yes. I’m quite the prattler now. I talk about her brother mostly.
I put in the greater part of my time boosting the tick. It seems to be
coming easier. Will-power, I suppose. And then, of course, I talk a
good deal about her mother’s novels.”
“Have you read them?”
“Every damned one of them--for her sake. And if there’s a greater proof
of love than that, show me! My gosh, what muck that woman writes!
That reminds me, I’ve got to send to the bookshop for her latest--out
yesterday. It’s called _The Stench of Life_. A sequel, I understand, to
_Grey Mildew_.”
“Brave lad,” I said, pressing his hand. “Brave, devoted lad!”
“Oh, I’d do more than that for her.” He smoked for a while in silence.
“By the way, I’m going to propose to her to-morrow.”
“Already?”
“Can’t put it off a minute longer. It’s been as much as I could manage,
bottling it up till now. Where do you think would be the best place? I
mean, it’s not the sort of thing you can do while you’re walking down
the street or having a cup of tea. I thought of asking her to have a
round with me and taking a stab at it on the links.”
“You could not do better. The links--Nature’s cathedral.”
“Right-o, then! I’ll let you know how I come out.”
“I wish you luck, my boy,” I said.
* * * * *
And what of Felicia, meanwhile? She was, alas, far from returning
the devotion which scorched Chester’s vital organs. He seemed to her
precisely the sort of man she most disliked. From childhood up Felicia
Blakeney had lived in an atmosphere of highbrowism, and the type of
husband she had always seen in her daydreams was the man who was simple
and straightforward and earthy and did not know whether Artbashiekeff
was a suburb of Moscow or a new kind of Russian drink. A man like
Chester, who on his own statement would rather read one of her mother’s
novels than eat, revolted her. And his warm affection for her brother
Crispin set the seal on her distaste.
Felicia was a dutiful child, and she loved her parents. It took a
bit of doing, but she did it. But at her brother Crispin she drew
the line. He wouldn’t do, and his friends were worse than he was.
They were high-voiced, supercilious, pince-nezed young men who talked
patronisingly of Life and Art, and Chester’s unblushing confession that
he was one of them had put him ten down and nine to play right away.
You may wonder why the boy’s undeniable skill on the links had no power
to soften the girl. The unfortunate fact was that all the good effects
of his prowess were neutralised by his behaviour while playing. All
her life she had treated golf with a proper reverence and awe, and in
Chester’s attitude towards the game she seemed to detect a horrible
shallowness. The fact is, Chester, in his efforts to keep himself from
using strong language, had found a sort of relief in a girlish giggle,
and it made her shudder every time she heard it.
His deportment, therefore, in the space of time leading up to the
proposal could not have been more injurious to his cause. They started
out quite happily, Chester doing a nice two-hundred-yarder off the
first tee, which for a moment awoke the girl’s respect. But at the
fourth, after a lovely brassie-shot, he found his ball deeply embedded
in the print of a woman’s high heel. It was just one of those rubs of
the green which normally would have caused him to ease his bosom with a
flood of sturdy protest, but now he was on his guard.
“Tee-hee!” simpered Chester, reaching for his niblick. “Too bad, too
bad!” and the girl shuddered to the depths of her soul.
Having holed out, he proceeded to enliven the walk to the next tee with
a few remarks on her mother’s literary style, and it was while they
were walking after their drives that he proposed.
His proposal, considering the circumstances, could hardly have been
less happily worded. Little knowing that he was rushing upon his doom,
Chester stressed the Crispin note. He gave Felicia the impression that
he was suggesting this marriage more for Crispin’s sake than anything
else. He conveyed the idea that he thought how nice it would be for
brother Crispin to have his old chum in the family. He drew a picture
of their little home, with Crispin for ever popping in and out like
a rabbit. It is not to be wondered at that, when at length he had
finished and she had time to speak, the horrified girl turned him down
with a thud.
It is at moments such as these that a man reaps the reward of a good
upbringing.
In similar circumstances those who have not had the benefit of a
sound training in golf are too apt to go wrong. Goaded by the sudden
anguish, they take to drink, plunge into dissipation, and write _vers
libre_. Chester was mercifully saved from this. I saw him the day after
he had been handed the mitten, and was struck by the look of grim
determination in his face. Deeply wounded though he was, I could see
that he was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul.
“I am sorry, my boy,” I said, sympathetically, when he had told me the
painful news.
“It can’t be helped,” he replied, bravely.
“Her decision was final?”
“Quite.”
“You do not contemplate having another pop at her?”
“No good. I know when I’m licked.”
I patted him on the shoulder and said the only thing it seemed possible
to say.
“After all, there is always golf.”
He nodded.
“Yes. My game needs a lot of tuning up. Now is the time to do it. From
now on I go at this pastime seriously. I make it my life-work. Who
knows?” he murmured, with a sudden gleam in his eyes. “The Amateur
Championship--”
“The Open!” I cried, falling gladly into his mood.
“The American Amateur,” said Chester, flushing.
“The American Open,” I chorused.
“No one has ever copped all four.”
“No one.”
“Watch me!” said Chester Meredith, simply.
* * * * *
It was about two weeks after this that I happened to look in on Chester
at his house one morning. I found him about to start for the links.
As he had foreshadowed in the conversation which I have just related,
he now spent most of the daylight hours on the course. In these two
weeks he had gone about his task of achieving perfection with a furious
energy which made him the talk of the club. Always one of the best
players in the place, he had developed an astounding brilliance. Men
who had played him level were now obliged to receive two and even three
strokes. The pro. himself conceding one, had only succeeded in halving
their match. The struggle for the President’s Cup came round once more,
and Chester won it for the second time with ridiculous ease.
When I arrived, he was practising chip-shots in his sitting-room. I
noticed that he seemed to be labouring under some strong emotion, and
his first words gave me the clue.
“She’s going away to-morrow,” he said, abruptly, lofting a ball over
the whatnot on to the Chesterfield.
I was not sure whether I was sorry or relieved. Her absence would leave
a terrible blank, of course, but it might be that it would help him to
get over his infatuation.
“Ah!” I said, non-committally.
Chester addressed his ball with a well-assumed phlegm, but I could
see by the way his ears wiggled that he was feeling deeply. I was not
surprised when he topped his shot into the coal-scuttle.
“She has promised to play a last round with me this morning,” he said.
Again I was doubtful what view to take. It was a pretty, poetic idea,
not unlike Browning’s “Last Ride Together,” but I was not sure if it
was altogether wise. However, it was none of my business, so I merely
patted him on the shoulder and he gathered up his clubs and went off.
* * * * *
Owing to motives of delicacy I had not offered to accompany him on his
round, and it was not till later that I learned the actual details of
what occurred. At the start, it seems, the spiritual anguish which he
was suffering had a depressing effect on his game. He hooked his drive
off the first tee and was only enabled to get a five by means of a
strong niblick shot out of the rough. At the second, the lake hole,
he lost a ball in the water and got another five. It was only at the
third that he began to pull himself together.
The test of a great golfer is his ability to recover from a bad start.
Chester had this quality to a pre-eminent degree. A lesser man,
conscious of being three over bogey for the first two holes, might
have looked on his round as ruined. To Chester it simply meant that he
had to get a couple of “birdies” right speedily, and he set about it
at once. Always a long driver, he excelled himself at the third. It
is, as you know, an uphill hole all the way, but his drive could not
have come far short of two hundred and fifty yards. A brassie-shot of
equal strength and unerring direction put him on the edge of the green,
and he holed out with a long putt two under bogey. He had hoped for a
“birdie” and he had achieved an “eagle.”
I think that this splendid feat must have softened Felicia’s heart, had
it not been for the fact that misery had by this time entirely robbed
Chester of the ability to smile. Instead, therefore, of behaving in
the wholesome, natural way of men who get threes at bogey five holes,
he preserved a drawn, impassive countenance; and as she watched him
tee up her ball, stiff, correct, polite, but to all outward appearance
absolutely inhuman, the girl found herself stifling that thrill of what
for a moment had been almost adoration. It was, she felt, exactly how
her brother Crispin would have comported himself if he had done a hole
in two under bogey.
And yet she could not altogether check a wistful sigh when, after
a couple of fours at the next two holes, he picked up another
stroke on the sixth and with an inspired spoon-shot brought his
medal-score down to one better than bogey by getting a two at the
hundred-and-seventy-yard seventh. But the brief spasm of tenderness
passed, and when he finished the first nine with two more fours
she refrained from anything warmer than a mere word of stereotyped
congratulation.
“One under bogey for the first nine,” she said. “Splendid!”
“One under bogey!” said Chester, woodenly.
“Out in thirty-four. What is the record for the course?”
Chester started. So great had been his preoccupation that he had not
given a thought to the course record. He suddenly realised now that the
pro., who had done the lowest medal-score to date--the other course
record was held by Peter Willard with a hundred and sixty-one, achieved
in his first season--had gone out in only one better than his own
figures that day.
“Sixty-eight,” he said.
“What a pity you lost those strokes at the beginning!”
“Yes,” said Chester.
He spoke absently--and, as it seemed to her, primly and without
enthusiasm--for the flaming idea of having a go at the course record
had only just occurred to him. Once before he had done the first nine
in thirty-four, but on that occasion he had not felt that curious
feeling of irresistible force which comes to a golfer at the very
top of his form. Then he had been aware all the time that he had
been putting chancily. They had gone in, yes, but he had uttered a
prayer per putt. To-day he was superior to any weak doubtings. When he
tapped the ball on the green, he knew it was going to sink. The course
record? Why not? What a last offering to lay at her feet! She would
go away, out of his life for ever; she would marry some other bird;
but the memory of that supreme round would remain with her as long as
she breathed. When he won the Open and Amateur for the second--the
third--the fourth time, she would say to herself, “I was with him when
he dented the record for his home course!” And he had only to pick up a
couple of strokes on the last nine, to do threes at holes where he was
wont to be satisfied with fours. Yes, by Vardon, he would take a whirl
at it.
* * * * *
You, who are acquainted with these links, will no doubt say that the
task which Chester Meredith had sketched out for himself--cutting two
strokes off thirty-five for the second nine--was one at which Humanity
might well shudder. The pro. himself, who had finished sixth in the
last Open Championship, had never done better than a thirty-five,
playing perfect golf and being one under par. But such was Chester’s
mood that, as he teed up on the tenth, he did not even consider the
possibility of failure. Every muscle in his body was working in perfect
co-ordination with its fellows, his wrists felt as if they were made
of tempered steel, and his eyes had just that hawk-like quality which
enables a man to judge his short approaches to the inch. He swung
forcefully, and the ball sailed so close to the direction-post that for
a moment it seemed as if it had hit it.
“Oo!” cried Felicia.
Chester did not speak. He was following the flight of the ball. It
sailed over the brow of the hill, and with his knowledge of the course
he could tell almost the exact patch of turf on which it must have come
to rest. An iron would do the business from there, and a single putt
would give him the first of the “birdies” he required. Two minutes
later he had holed out a six-foot putt for a three.
“Oo!” said Felicia again.
Chester walked to the eleventh tee in silence.
“No, never mind,” she said, as he stooped to put her ball on the sand.
“I don’t think I’ll play any more. I’d much rather just watch you.”
“Oh, that you could watch me through life!” said Chester, but he said
it to himself. His actual words were “Very well!” and he spoke them
with a stiff coldness which chilled the girl.
The eleventh is one of the trickiest holes on the course, as no doubt
you have found out for yourself. It looks absurdly simple, but that
little patch of wood on the right that seems so harmless is placed just
in the deadliest position to catch even the most slightly sliced drive.
Chester’s lacked the austere precision of his last. A hundred yards
from the tee it swerved almost imperceptibly, and, striking a branch,
fell in the tangled undergrowth. It took him two strokes to hack it out
and put it on the green, and then his long putt, after quivering on
the edge of the hole, stayed there. For a swift instant red-hot words
rose to his lips, but he caught them just as they were coming out and
crushed them back. He looked at his ball and he looked at the hole.
“Tut!” said Chester.
Felicia uttered a deep sigh. The niblick-shot out of the rough had
impressed her profoundly. If only, she felt, this superb golfer had
been more human! If only she were able to be constantly in this man’s
society, to see exactly what it was that he did with his left wrist
that gave that terrific snap to his drives, she might acquire the knack
herself one of these days. For she was a clear-thinking, honest girl,
and thoroughly realised that she did not get the distance she ought
to with her wood. With a husband like Chester beside her to stimulate
and advise, of what might she not be capable? If she got wrong in
her stance, he could put her right with a word. If she had a bout of
slicing, how quickly he would tell her what caused it. And she knew
that she had only to speak the word to wipe out the effects of her
refusal, to bring him to her side for ever.
But could a girl pay such a price? When he had got that “eagle” on the
third, he had looked bored. When he had missed this last putt, he had
not seemed to care. “Tut!” What a word to use at such a moment! No,
she felt sadly, it could not be done. To marry Chester Meredith, she
told herself, would be like marrying a composite of Soames Forsyte, Sir
Willoughby Patterne, and all her brother Crispin’s friends. She sighed
and was silent.
* * * * *
Chester, standing on the twelfth tee, reviewed the situation swiftly,
like a general before a battle. There were seven holes to play, and he
had to do these in two better than bogey. The one that faced him now
offered few opportunities. It was a long, slogging, dog-leg hole, and
even Ray and Taylor, when they had played their exhibition game on the
course, had taken fives. No opening there.
The thirteenth--up a steep hill with a long iron-shot for one’s second
and a blind green fringed with bunkers? Scarcely practicable to hope
for better than a four. The fourteenth--into the valley with the ground
sloping sharply down to the ravine? He had once done it in three, but
it had been a fluke. No; on these three holes he must be content to
play for a steady par and trust to picking up a stroke on the fifteenth.
The fifteenth, straightforward up to the plateau green with its circle
of bunkers, presents few difficulties to the finished golfer who is on
his game. A bunker meant nothing to Chester in his present conquering
vein. His mashie-shot second soared almost contemptuously over the
chasm and rolled to within a foot of the pin. He came to the sixteenth
with the clear-cut problem before him of snipping two strokes off par
on the last three holes.
To the unthinking man, not acquainted with the layout of our links,
this would no doubt appear a tremendous feat. But the fact is, the
Greens Committee, with perhaps an unduly sentimental bias towards the
happy ending, have arranged a comparatively easy finish to the course.
The sixteenth is a perfectly plain hole with broad fairway and a
down-hill run; the seventeenth, a one-shot affair with no difficulties
for the man who keeps them straight; and the eighteenth, though its
up-hill run makes it deceptive to the stranger and leads the unwary
to take a mashie instead of a light iron for his second, has no real
venom in it. Even Peter Willard has occasionally come home in a canter
with a six, five, and seven, conceding himself only two eight-foot
putts. It is, I think, this mild conclusion to a tough course that
makes the refreshment-room of our club so noticeable for its sea of
happy faces. The bar every day is crowded with rejoicing men who,
forgetting the agonies of the first fifteen, are babbling of what they
did on the last three. The seventeenth, with its possibilities of
holing out a topped second, is particularly soothing.
* * * * *
Chester Meredith was not the man to top his second on any hole, so this
supreme bliss did not come his way; but he laid a beautiful mashie-shot
dead and got a three; and when with his iron he put his first well on
the green at the seventeenth and holed out for a two, life, for all his
broken heart, seemed pretty tolerable. He now had the situation well in
hand. He had only to play his usual game to get a four on the last and
lower the course record by one stroke.
It was at this supreme moment of his life that he ran into the Wrecking
Crew.
You doubtless find it difficult to understand how it came about that if
the Wrecking Crew were on the course at all he had not run into them
long before. The explanation is that, with a regard for the etiquette
of the game unusual in these miserable men, they had for once obeyed
the law that enacts that foursomes shall start at the tenth. They had
begun their dark work on the second nine, accordingly, at almost the
exact moment when Chester Meredith was driving off at the first, and
this had enabled them to keep ahead until now. When Chester came to the
eighteenth tee, they were just leaving it, moving up the fairway with
their caddies in mass formation and looking to his exasperated eye like
one of those great race-migrations of the Middle Ages. Wherever Chester
looked he seemed to see human, so to speak, figures. One was doddering
about in the long grass fifty yards from the tee, others debouched to
left and right. The course was crawling with them.
Chester sat down on the bench with a weary sigh. He knew these men.
Self-centred, remorseless, deaf to all the promptings of their better
nature, they never let any one through. There was nothing to do but
wait.
The Wrecking Crew scratched on. The man near the tee rolled his ball
ten yards, then twenty, then thirty--he was improving. Ere long he
would be out of range. Chester rose and swished his driver.
But the end was not yet. The individual operating in the rough on the
left had been advancing in slow stages, and now, finding his ball teed
up on a tuft of grass, he opened his shoulders and let himself go.
There was a loud report, and the ball, hitting a tree squarely, bounded
back almost to the tee, and all the weary work was to do again. By the
time Chester was able to drive, he was reduced by impatience, and the
necessity of refraining from commenting on the state of affairs as he
would have wished to comment, to a frame of mind in which no man could
have kept himself from pressing. He pressed, and topped. The ball
skidded over the turf for a meagre hundred yards.
“D-d-d-dear me!” said Chester.
The next moment he uttered a bitter laugh. Too late a miracle had
happened. One of the foul figures in front was waving its club. Other
ghastly creatures were withdrawing to the side of the fairway. Now,
when the harm had been done, these outcasts were signalling to him to
go through. The hollow mockery of the thing swept over Chester like
a wave. What was the use of going through now? He was a good three
hundred yards from the green, and he needed bogey at this hole to break
the record. Almost absently he drew his brassie from his bag; then, as
the full sense of his wrongs bit into his soul, he swung viciously.
Golf is a strange game. Chester had pressed on the tee and foozled. He
pressed now, and achieved the most perfect shot of his life. The ball
shot from its place as if a charge of powerful explosive were behind
it. Never deviating from a straight line, never more than six feet
from the ground, it sailed up the hill, crossed the bunker, eluded the
mounds beyond, struck the turf, rolled, and stopped fifty feet from the
hole. It was a brassie-shot of a lifetime, and shrill senile yippings
of excitement and congratulation floated down from the Wrecking Crew.
For, degraded though they were, these men were not wholly devoid of
human instincts.
Chester drew a deep breath. His ordeal was over. That third shot, which
would lay the ball right up to the pin, was precisely the sort of thing
he did best. Almost from boyhood he had been a wizard at the short
approach. He could hole out in two now on his left ear. He strode up
the hill to his ball. It could not have been lying better. Two inches
away there was a nasty cup in the turf; but it had avoided this and was
sitting nicely perched up, smiling an invitation to the mashie-niblick.
Chester shuffled his feet and eyed the flag keenly. Then he stooped to
play, and Felicia watched him breathlessly. Her whole being seemed to
be concentrated on him. She had forgotten everything save that she was
seeing a course record get broken. She could not have been more wrapped
up in his success if she had had large sums of money on it.
* * * * *
The Wrecking Crew, meanwhile, had come to life again. They had stopped
twittering about Chester’s brassie-shot and were thinking of resuming
their own game. Even in foursomes where fifty yards is reckoned a good
shot somebody must be away, and the man whose turn it was to play was
the one who had acquired from his brother-members of the club the
nickname of the First Grave-Digger.
A word about this human wen. He was--if there can be said to be grades
in such a sub-species--the star performer of the Wrecking Crew. The
lunches of fifty-seven years had caused his chest to slip down into
the mezzanine floor, but he was still a powerful man, and had in his
youth been a hammer-thrower of some repute. He differed from his
colleagues--the Man With the Hoe, Old Father Time, and Consul, the
Almost Human--in that, while they were content to peck cautiously at
the ball, he never spared himself in his efforts to do it a violent
injury. Frequently he had cut a blue dot almost in half with his
niblick. He was completely muscle-bound, so that he seldom achieved
anything beyond a series of chasms in the turf, but he was always
trying, and it was his secret belief that, given two or three miracles
happening simultaneously, he would one of these days bring off a
snifter. Years of disappointment had, however, reduced the flood of
hope to a mere trickle, and when he took his brassie now and addressed
the ball he had no immediate plans beyond a vague intention of rolling
the thing a few yards farther up the hill.
The fact that he had no business to play at all till Chester had
holed out did not occur to him; and even if it had occurred he would
have dismissed the objection as finicking. Chester, bending over his
ball, was nearly two hundred yards away--or the distance of three full
brassie-shots. The First Grave-Digger did not hesitate. He whirled up
his club as in distant days he had been wont to swing the hammer, and,
with the grunt which this performance always wrung from him, brought it
down.
Golfers--and I stretch this term to include the Wrecking Crew--are a
highly imitative race. The spectacle of a flubber flubbing ahead of us
on the fairway inclines to make us flub as well; and, conversely, it
is immediately after we have seen a magnificent shot that we are apt
to eclipse ourselves. Consciously the Grave-Digger had no notion how
Chester had made that superb brassie-biff of his, but all the while I
suppose his subconscious self had been taking notes. At any rate, on
this one occasion he, too, did the shot of a lifetime. As he opened
his eyes, which he always shut tightly at the moment of impact, and
started to unravel himself from the complicated tangle in which his
follow-through had left him, he perceived the ball breasting the hill
like some untamed jack-rabbit of the Californian prairie.
For a moment his only emotion was one of dream-like amazement. He
stood looking at the ball with a wholly impersonal wonder, like a man
suddenly confronted with some terrific work of Nature. Then, as a
sleep-walker awakens, he came to himself with a start. Directly in
front of the flying ball was a man bending to make an approach-shot.
Chester, always a concentrated golfer when there was a man’s work to
do, had scarcely heard the crack of the brassie behind him. Certainly
he had paid no attention to it. His whole mind was fixed on his stroke.
He measured with his eye the distance to the pin, noted the down-slope
of the green, and shifted his stance a little to allow for it. Then,
with a final swift waggle, he laid his club-head behind the ball and
slowly raised it. It was just coming down when the world became full of
shouts of “Fore!” and something hard smote him violently on the seat of
his plus-fours.
The supreme tragedies of life leave us momentarily stunned. For an
instant which seemed an age Chester could not understand what had
happened. True, he realised that there had been an earthquake, a
cloud-burst, and a railway accident, and that a high building had
fallen on him at the exact moment when somebody had shot him with a
gun, but these happenings would account for only a small part of his
sensations. He blinked several times, and rolled his eyes wildly. And
it was while rolling them that he caught sight of the gesticulating
Wrecking Crew on the lower slopes and found enlightenment.
Simultaneously, he observed his ball only a yard and a half from where
it had been when he addressed it.
Chester Meredith gave one look at his ball, one look at the flag, one
look at the Wrecking Crew, one look at the sky. His lips writhed, his
forehead turned vermilion. Beads of perspiration started out on his
forehead. And then, with his whole soul seething like a cistern struck
by a thunderbolt, he spoke.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” cried Chester.
Dimly he was aware of a wordless exclamation from the girl beside him,
but he was too distraught to think of her now. It was as if all the
oaths pent up within his bosom for so many weary days were struggling
and jostling to see which could get out first. They cannoned into
each other, they linked hands and formed parties, they got themselves
all mixed up in weird vowel-sounds, the second syllable of some
red-hot verb forming a temporary union with the first syllable of some
blistering noun.
“----! ----!! ----!!! ----!!!! ----!!!!!” cried Chester.
Felicia stood staring at him. In her eyes was the look of one who sees
visions.
“***!!! ***!!! ***!!! ***!!!” roared Chester, in part.
A great wave of emotion flooded over the girl. How she had misjudged
this silver-tongued man!
She shivered as she thought that, had this not happened, in another
five minutes they would have parted for ever, sundered by seas of
misunderstanding, she cold and scornful, he with all his music still
within him.
“Oh, Mr. Meredith!” she cried, faintly.
With a sickening abruptness Chester came to himself. It was as if
somebody had poured a pint of ice-cold water down his back. He blushed
vividly. He realised with horror and shame how grossly he had offended
against all the canons of decency and good taste. He felt like the
man in one of those “What Is Wrong With This Picture?” things in the
advertisements of the etiquette-books.
“I beg--I beg your pardon!” he mumbled, humbly. “Please, please,
forgive me. I should not have spoken like that.”
“You should! You should!” cried the girl, passionately. “You should
have said all that and a lot more. That awful man ruining your record
round like that! Oh, why am I a poor weak woman with practically no
vocabulary that’s any use for anything!”
Quite suddenly, without knowing that she had moved, she found herself
at his side, holding his hand.
“Oh, to think how I misjudged you!” she wailed. “I thought you cold,
stiff, formal, precise. I hated the way you sniggered when you foozled
a shot. I see it all now! You were keeping it in for my sake. Can you
ever forgive me?”
Chester, as I have said, was not a very quick-minded young man, but it
would have taken a duller youth than he to fail to read the message in
the girl’s eyes, to miss the meaning of the pressure of her hand on his.
“My gosh!” he exclaimed wildly. “Do you mean--? Do you think--? Do you
really--? Honestly, has this made a difference? Is there any chance for
a fellow, I mean?”
Her eyes helped him on. He felt suddenly confident and masterful.
“Look here--no kidding--will you marry me?” he said.
“I will! I will!”
“Darling!” cried Chester.
He would have said more, but at this point he was interrupted by the
arrival of the Wrecking Crew, who panted up full of apologies; and
Chester, as he eyed them, thought that he had never seen a nicer,
cheerier, pleasanter lot of fellows in his life. His heart warmed to
them. He made a mental resolve to hunt them up some time and have a
good long talk. He waved the Grave-Digger’s remorse airily aside.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Not at all. Faults on both sides. By the
way, my _fiancée_, Miss Blakeney.”
The Wrecking Crew puffed acknowledgment.
“But, my dear fellow,” said the Grave-Digger, “it was--really it
was--unforgivable. Spoiling your shot. Never dreamed I would send the
ball that distance. Lucky you weren’t playing an important match.”
“But he was,” moaned Felicia. “He was trying for the course record, and
now he can’t break it.”
The Wrecking Crew paled behind their whiskers, aghast at this tragedy,
but Chester, glowing with the yeasty intoxication of love, laughed
lightly.
“What do you mean, can’t break it?” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve one more
shot.”
And, carelessly addressing the ball, he holed out with a light flick of
his mashie-niblick.
“Chester, darling!” said Felicia.
They were walking slowly through a secluded glade in the quiet evenfall.
“Yes, precious?”
Felicia hesitated. What she was going to say would hurt him, she knew,
and her love was so great that to hurt him was agony.
“Do you think--” she began. “I wonder whether--It’s about Crispin.”
“Good old Crispin!”
Felicia sighed, but the matter was too vital to be shirked. Cost what
it might, she must speak her mind.
“Chester, darling, when we are married, would you mind very, _very_
much if we didn’t have Crispin with us _all_ the time?”
Chester started.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you like him?”
“Not very much,” confessed Felicia. “I don’t think I’m clever enough
for him. I’ve rather disliked him ever since we were children. But I
know what a friend he is of yours--”
Chester uttered a joyous laugh.
“Friend of mine! Why, I can’t stand the blighter! I loathe the worm! I
abominate the excrescence! I only pretended we were friends because I
thought it would put me in solid with you. The man is a pest and should
have been strangled at birth. At school I used to kick him every time
I saw him. If your brother Crispin tries so much as to set foot across
the threshold of our little home, I’ll set the dog on him.”
“Darling!” whispered Felicia. “We shall be very, very happy.” She drew
her arm through his. “Tell me, dearest,” she murmured, “all about how
you used to kick Crispin at school.”
And together they wandered off into the sunset.
CHAPTER V
THE MAGIC PLUS FOURS
“After all,” said the young man, “golf is only a game.”
He spoke bitterly and with the air of one who has been following a
train of thought. He had come into the smoking-room of the club-house
in low spirits at the dusky close of a November evening, and for some
minutes had been sitting, silent and moody, staring at the log fire.
“Merely a pastime,” said the young man.
The Oldest Member, nodding in his arm-chair, stiffened with horror, and
glanced quickly over his shoulder to make sure that none of the waiters
had heard these terrible words.
“Can this be George William Pennefather speaking!” he said,
reproachfully. “My boy, you are not yourself.”
The young man flushed a little beneath his tan: for he had had a good
upbringing and was not bad at heart.
“Perhaps I ought not to have gone quite so far as that,” he admitted.
“I was only thinking that a fellow’s got no right, just because he
happens to have come on a bit in his form lately, to treat a fellow as
if a fellow was a leper or something.”
The Oldest Member’s face cleared, and he breathed a relieved sigh.
“Ah! I see,” he said. “You spoke hastily and in a sudden fit of pique
because something upset you out on the links to-day. Tell me all. Let
me see, you were playing with Nathaniel Frisby this afternoon, were you
not? I gather that he beat you.”
“Yes, he did. Giving me a third. But it isn’t being beaten that I mind.
What I object to is having the blighter behave as if he were a sort of
champion condescending to a mere mortal. Dash it, it seemed to bore him
playing with me! Every time I sliced off the tee he looked at me as if
I were a painful ordeal. Twice when I was having a bit of trouble in
the bushes I caught him yawning. And after we had finished he started
talking about what a good game croquet was, and he wondered more people
didn’t take it up. And it’s only a month or so ago that I could play
the man level!”
The Oldest Member shook his snowy head sadly.
“There is nothing to be done about it,” he said. “We can only hope that
the poison will in time work its way out of the man’s system. Sudden
success at golf is like the sudden acquisition of wealth. It is apt
to unsettle and deteriorate the character. And, as it comes almost
miraculously, so only a miracle can effect a cure. The best advice I
can give you is to refrain from playing with Nathaniel Frisby till you
can keep your tee-shots straight.”
“Oh, but don’t run away with the idea that I wasn’t pretty good off the
tee this afternoon!” said the young man. “I should like to describe to
you the shot I did on the--”
“Meanwhile,” proceeded the Oldest Member, “I will relate to you a
little story which bears on what I have been saying.”
“From the very moment I addressed the ball--”
“It is the story of two loving hearts temporarily estranged owing to
the sudden and unforseen proficiency of one of the couple--”
“I waggled quickly and strongly, like Duncan. Then, swinging smoothly
back, rather in the Vardon manner--”
“But as I see,” said the Oldest Member, “that you are all impatience
for me to begin, I will do so without further preamble.”
* * * * *
To the philosophical student of golf like myself (said the Oldest
Member) perhaps the most outstanding virtue of this noble pursuit is
the fact that it is a medicine for the soul. Its great service to
humanity is that it teaches human beings that, whatever petty triumphs
they may have achieved in other walks of life, they are after all
merely human. It acts as a corrective against sinful pride. I attribute
the insane arrogance of the later Roman emperors almost entirely to
the fact that, never having played golf, they never knew that strange
chastening humility which is engendered by a topped chip-shot. If
Cleopatra had been outed in the first round of the Ladies’ Singles,
we should have heard a lot less of her proud imperiousness. And,
coming down to modern times, it was undoubtedly his rotten golf that
kept Wallace Chesney the nice unspoiled fellow he was. For in every
other respect he had everything in the world calculated to make a man
conceited and arrogant. He was the best-looking man for miles around;
his health was perfect; and, in addition to this, he was rich; danced,
rode, played bridge and polo with equal skill; and was engaged to be
married to Charlotte Dix. And when you saw Charlotte Dix you realised
that being engaged to her would by itself have been quite enough luck
for any one man.
But Wallace, as I say, despite all his advantages, was a thoroughly
nice, modest young fellow. And I attribute this to the fact that,
while one of the keenest golfers in the club, he was also one of the
worst players. Indeed, Charlotte Dix used to say to me in his presence
that she could not understand why people paid money to go to the
circus when by merely walking over the brow of a hill they could watch
Wallace Chesney trying to get out of the bunker by the eleventh green.
And Wallace took the gibe with perfect good humour, for there was a
delightful camaraderie between them which robbed it of any sting. Often
at lunch in the club-house I used to hear him and Charlotte planning
the handicapping details of a proposed match between Wallace and a
non-existent cripple whom Charlotte claimed to have discovered in the
village--it being agreed finally that he should accept seven bisques
from the cripple, but that, if the latter ever recovered the use of his
arms, Wallace should get a stroke a hole.
In short, a thoroughly happy and united young couple. Two hearts, if I
may coin an expression, that beat as one.
I would not have you misjudge Wallace Chesney. I may have given you
the impression that his attitude towards golf was light and frivolous,
but such was not the case. As I have said, he was one of the keenest
members of the club. Love made him receive the joshing of his _fiancée_
in the kindly spirit in which it was meant, but at heart he was as
earnest as you could wish. He practised early and late; he bought
golf books; and the mere sight of a patent club of any description
acted on him like catnip on a cat. I remember remonstrating with him
on the occasion of his purchasing a wooden-faced driving-mashie which
weighed about two pounds, and was, taking it for all in all, as foul an
instrument as ever came out of the workshop of a clubmaker who had been
dropped on the head by his nurse when a baby.
“I know, I know,” he said, when I had finished indicating some of the
weapon’s more obvious defects. “But the point is, I believe in it. It
gives me confidence. I don’t believe you could slice with a thing like
that if you tried.”
Confidence! That was what Wallace Chesney lacked, and that, as he saw
it, was the prime grand secret of golf. Like an alchemist on the track
of the Philosopher’s stone, he was for ever seeking for something
which would really give him confidence. I recollect that he even tried
repeating to himself fifty times every morning the words, “Every day in
every way I grow better and better.” This, however, proved such a black
lie that he gave it up. The fact is, the man was a visionary, and it is
to auto-hypnosis of some kind that I attribute the extraordinary change
that came over him at the beginning of his third season.
* * * * *
You may have noticed in your perambulations about the City a shop
bearing above its door and upon its windows the legend:
COHEN BROS.,
SECOND-HAND CLOTHIERS,
a statement which is borne out by endless vistas seen through the door
of every variety of what is technically known as Gents’ Wear. But the
Brothers Cohen, though their main stock-in-trade is garments which have
been rejected by their owners for one reason or another, do not confine
their dealings to Gents’ Wear. The place is a museum of derelict goods
of every description. You can get a second-hand revolver there, or
a second-hand sword, or a second-hand umbrella. You can do a cheap
deal in field-glasses, trunks, dog collars, canes, photograph frames,
attaché cases, and bowls for goldfish. And on the bright spring morning
when Wallace Chesney happened to pass by there was exhibited in the
window a putter of such pre-eminently lunatic design that he stopped
dead as if he had run into an invisible wall, and then, panting like an
overwrought fish, charged in through the door.
* * * * *
The shop was full of the Cohen family, sombre-eyed, smileless men with
purposeful expressions; and two of these, instantly descending upon
Wallace Chesney like leopards, began in swift silence to thrust him
into a suit of yellow tweed. Having worked the coat over his shoulders
with a shoe-horn, they stood back to watch the effect.
“A beautiful fit,” announced Isidore Cohen.
“A little snug under the arms,” said his brother Irving. “But that’ll
give.”
“The warmth of the body will make it give,” said Isidore.
“Or maybe you’ll lose weight in the summer,” said Irving.
Wallace, when he had struggled out of the coat and was able to breathe,
said that he had come in to buy a putter. Isidore thereupon sold him
the putter, a dog collar, and a set of studs, and Irving sold him a
fireman’s helmet: and he was about to leave when their elder brother
Lou, who had just finished fitting out another customer, who had come
in to buy a cap, with two pairs of trousers and a miniature aquarium
for keeping newts in, saw that business was in progress and strolled
up. His fathomless eye rested on Wallace, who was toying feebly with
the putter.
“You play golf?” asked Lou. “Then looka here!”
He dived into an alleyway of dead clothing, dug for a moment, and
emerged with something at the sight of which Wallace Chesney, hardened
golfer that he was, blenched and threw up an arm defensively.
“No, no!” he cried.
The object which Lou Cohen was waving insinuatingly before his eyes
was a pair of those golfing breeches which are technically known as
Plus Fours. A player of two years’ standing, Wallace Chesney was not
unfamiliar with Plus Fours--all the club cracks wore them--but he had
never seen Plus Fours like these. What might be termed the main _motif_
of the fabric was a curious vivid pink, and with this to work on the
architect had let his imagination run free, and had produced so much
variety in the way of chessboard squares of white, yellow, violet, and
green that the eye swam as it looked upon them.
“These were made to measure for Sandy McHoots, the Open Champion,” said
Lou, stroking the left leg lovingly. “But he sent ’em back for some
reason or other.”
“Perhaps they frightened the children,” said Wallace, recollecting
having heard that Mr. McHoots was a married man.
“They’ll fit you nice,” said Lou.
“Sure they’ll fit him nice,” said Isidore, warmly.
“Why, just take a look at yourself in the glass,” said Irving, “and see
if they don’t fit you nice.”
And, as one who wakes from a trance, Wallace discovered that his lower
limbs were now encased in the prismatic garment. At what point in the
proceedings the brethren had slipped them on him, he could not have
said. But he was undeniably in.
Wallace looked in the glass. For a moment, as he eyed his reflection,
sheer horror gripped him. Then suddenly, as he gazed, he became aware
that his first feelings were changing. The initial shock over, he was
becoming calmer. He waggled his right leg with a certain sang-froid.
There is a certain passage in the works of the poet Pope with which you
may be familiar. It runs as follows:
“_Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen:
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace._”
Even so was it with Wallace Chesney and these Plus Fours. At first he
had recoiled from them as any decent-minded man would have done. Then,
after a while, almost abruptly he found himself in the grip of a new
emotion. After an unsuccessful attempt to analyse this, he suddenly
got it. Amazing as it may seem, it was pleasure that he felt. He
caught his eye in the mirror, and it was smirking. Now that the things
were actually on, by Hutchinson, they didn’t look half bad. By Braid,
they didn’t. There was a sort of something about them. Take away that
expanse of bare leg with its unsightly sock-suspender and substitute a
woolly stocking, and you would have the lower section of a golfer. For
the first time in his life, he thought, he looked like a man who could
play golf.
There came to him an odd sensation of masterfulness. He was still
holding the putter, and now he swung it up above his shoulder. A fine
swing, all lissomness and supple grace, quite different from any swing
he had ever done before.
Wallace Chesney gasped. He knew that at last he had discovered that
prime grand secret of golf for which he had searched so long. It was
the costume that did it. All you had to do was wear Plus Fours. He had
always hitherto played in grey flannel trousers. Naturally he had not
been able to do himself justice. Golf required an easy dash, and how
could you be easily dashing in concertina-shaped trousers with a patch
on the knee? He saw now--what he had never seen before--that it was not
because they were crack players that crack players wore Plus Fours:
it was because they wore Plus Fours that they were crack players. And
these Plus Fours had been the property of an Open Champion. Wallace
Chesney’s bosom swelled, and he was filled, as by some strange gas,
with joy--with excitement--with confidence. Yes, for the first time in
his golfing life, he felt really confident.
True, the things might have been a shade less gaudy: they might perhaps
have hit the eye with a slightly less violent punch: but what of
that? True, again, he could scarcely hope to avoid the censure of his
club-mates when he appeared like this on the links: but what of _that_?
His club-mates must set their teeth and learn to bear these Plus Fours
like men. That was what Wallace Chesney thought about it. If they did
not like his Plus Fours, let them go and play golf somewhere else.
“How much?” he muttered, thickly. And the Brothers Cohen clustered
grimly round with note-books and pencils.
In predicting a stormy reception for his new apparel, Wallace Chesney
had not been unduly pessimistic. The moment he entered the club-house
Disaffection reared its ugly head. Friends of years’ standing called
loudly for the committee, and there was a small and vehement party
of the left wing, headed by Raymond Gandle, who was an artist by
profession, and consequently had a sensitive eye, which advocated
the tearing off and public burial of the obnoxious garment. But,
prepared as he had been for some such demonstration on the part of the
coarser-minded, Wallace had hoped for better things when he should meet
Charlotte Dix, the girl who loved him. Charlotte, he had supposed,
would understand and sympathise.
Instead of which, she uttered a piercing cry and staggered to a bench,
whence a moment later she delivered her ultimatum.
“Quick!” she said. “Before I have to look again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pop straight back into the changing-room while I’ve got my eyes shut,
and remove the fancy-dress.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Darling,” said Charlotte, “I think it’s sweet and patriotic of you to
be proud of your cycling club colours or whatever they are, but you
mustn’t wear them on the links. It will unsettle the caddies.”
“They _are_ a trifle on the bright side,” admitted Wallace. “But it
helps my game, wearing them. I was trying a few practice-shots just
now, and I couldn’t go wrong. Slammed the ball on the meat every time.
They inspire me, if you know what I mean. Come on, let’s be starting.”
Charlotte opened her eyes incredulously.
“You can’t seriously mean that you’re really going to _play_ in--those?
It’s against the rules. There must be a rule somewhere in the book
against coming out looking like a sunset. Won’t you go and burn them
for my sake?”
“But I tell you they give me confidence. I sort of squint down at them
when I’m addressing the ball, and I feel like a pro.”
“Then the only thing to do is for me to play you for them. Come on,
Wally, be a sportsman. I’ll give you a half and play you for the whole
outfit--the breeches, the red jacket, the little cap, and the belt with
the snake’s-head buckle. I’m sure all those things must have gone with
the breeches. Is it a bargain?”
* * * * *
Strolling on the club-house terrace some two hours later, Raymond
Gandle encountered Charlotte and Wallace coming up from the eighteenth
green.
“Just the girl I wanted to see,” said Raymond. “Miss Dix, I represent a
select committee of my fellow-members, and I have come to ask you on
their behalf to use the influence of a good woman to induce Wally to
destroy those Plus Fours of his, which we all consider nothing short
of Bolshevik propaganda and a menace to the public weal. May I rely on
you?”
“You may not,” retorted Charlotte. “They are the poor boy’s mascot.
You’ve no idea how they have improved his game. He has just beaten me
hollow. I am going to try to learn to bear them, so you must. Really,
you’ve no notion how he has come on. My cripple won’t be able to give
him more than a couple of bisques if he keeps up this form.”
“It’s something about the things,” said Wallace. “They give me
confidence.”
“They give _me_ a pain in the neck,” said Raymond Gandle.
* * * * *
To the thinking man nothing is more remarkable in this life than the
way in which Humanity adjusts itself to conditions which at their
outset might well have appeared intolerable. Some great cataclysm
occurs, some storm or earthquake, shaking the community to its
foundations; and after the first pardonable consternation one finds the
sufferers resuming their ordinary pursuits as if nothing had happened.
There have been few more striking examples of this adaptability than
the behaviour of the members of our golf-club under the impact of
Wallace Chesney’s Plus Fours. For the first few days it is not too
much to say that they were stunned. Nervous players sent their caddies
on in front of them at blind holes, so that they might be warned in
time of Wallace’s presence ahead and not have him happening to them
all of a sudden. And even the pro. was not unaffected. Brought up in
Scotland in an atmosphere of tartan kilts, he nevertheless winced,
and a startled “Hoots!” was forced from his lips when Wallace Chesney
suddenly appeared in the valley as he was about to drive from the fifth
tee.
But in about a week conditions were back to normalcy. Within ten days
the Plus Fours became a familiar feature of the landscape, and were
accepted as such without comment. They were pointed out to strangers
together with the waterfall, the Lover’s Leap, and the view from
the eighth green as things you ought not to miss when visiting the
course; but apart from that one might almost say they were ignored.
And meanwhile Wallace Chesney continued day by day to make the most
extraordinary progress in his play.
As I said before, and I think you will agree with me when I have
told you what happened subsequently, it was probably a case of
auto-hypnosis. There is no other sphere in which a belief in oneself
has such immediate effects as it has in golf. And Wallace, having
acquired self-confidence, went on from strength to strength. In under
a week he had ploughed his way through the Unfortunate Incidents--of
which class Peter Willard was the best example--and was challenging the
fellows who kept three shots in five somewhere on the fairway. A month
later he was holding his own with ten-handicap men. And by the middle
of the summer he was so far advanced that his name occasionally cropped
up in speculative talks on the subject of the July medal. One might
have been excused for supposing that, as far as Wallace Chesney was
concerned, all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
And yet--
The first inkling I received that anything was wrong came through a
chance meeting with Raymond Gandle, who happened to pass my gate on his
way back from the links just as I drove up in my taxi; for I had been
away from home for many weeks on a protracted business tour. I welcomed
Gandle’s advent and invited him in to smoke a pipe and put me abreast
of local gossip. He came readily enough--and seemed, indeed, to have
something on his mind and to be glad of the opportunity of revealing it
to a sympathetic auditor.
“And how,” I asked him, when we were comfortably settled, “did your
game this afternoon come out?”
“Oh, he beat me,” said Gandle, and it seemed to me that there was a
note of bitterness in his voice.
“Then He, whoever he was, must have been an extremely competent
performer?” I replied, courteously, for Gandle was one of the finest
players in the club. “Unless, of course, you were giving him some
impossible handicap.”
“No; we played level.”
“Indeed! Who was your opponent?”
“Chesney.”
“Wallace Chesney! And he beat you, playing level! This is the most
amazing thing I have ever heard.”
“He’s improved out of all knowledge.”
“He must have done. Do you think he would ever beat you again?”
“No. Because he won’t have the chance.”
“You surely do not mean that you will not play him because you are
afraid of being beaten?”
“It isn’t being beaten I mind--”
And if I omit to report the remainder of his speech it is not merely
because it contained expressions with which I am reluctant to sully my
lips, but because, omitting these expletives, what he said was almost
word for word what you were saying to me just now about Nathaniel
Frisby. It was, it seemed, Wallace Chesney’s manner, his arrogance,
his attitude of belonging to some superior order of being that had so
wounded Raymond Gandle. Wallace Chesney had, it appeared, criticised
Gandle’s mashie-play in no friendly spirit; had hung up the game on
the fourteenth tee in order to show him how to place his feet; and on
the way back to the club-house had said that the beauty of golf was
that the best player could enjoy a round even with a dud, because,
though there might be no interest in the match, he could always amuse
himself by playing for his medal score.
I was profoundly shaken.
“Wallace Chesney!” I exclaimed. “Was it really Wallace Chesney who
behaved in the manner you describe?”
“Unless he’s got a twin brother of the same name, it was.”
“Wallace Chesney a victim to swelled head! I can hardly credit it.”
“Well, you needn’t take my word for it unless you want to. Ask anybody.
It isn’t often he can get any one to play with him now.”
“You horrify me!”
Raymond Gandle smoked awhile in brooding silence.
“You’ve heard about his engagement?” he said at length.
“I have heard nothing, nothing. What about his engagement?”
“Charlotte Dix has broken it off.”
“No!”
“Yes. Couldn’t stand him any longer.”
I got rid of Gandle as soon as I could. I made my way as quickly as
possible to the house where Charlotte lived with her aunt. I was
determined to sift this matter to the bottom and to do all that lay in
my power to heal the breach between two young people for whom I had a
great affection.
“I have just heard the news,” I said, when the aunt had retired to some
secret lair, as aunts do, and Charlotte and I were alone.
“What news?” said Charlotte, dully. I thought she looked pale and ill,
and she had certainly grown thinner.
“This dreadful news about your engagement to Wallace Chesney. Tell me,
why did you do this thing? Is there no hope of a reconciliation?”
“Not unless Wally becomes his old self again.”
“But I had always regarded you two as ideally suited to one another.”
“Wally has completely changed in the last few weeks. Haven’t you heard?”
“Only sketchily, from Raymond Gandle.”
“I refuse,” said Charlotte, proudly, all the woman in her leaping
to her eyes, “to marry a man who treats me as if I were a kronen at
the present rate of exchange, merely because I slice an occasional
tee-shot. The afternoon I broke off the engagement”--her voice shook,
and I could see that her indifference was but a mask--“the afternoon I
broke off the en-gug-gug-gage-ment, he t-told me I ought to use an iron
off the tee instead of a dud-dud-driver.”
And the stricken girl burst into an uncontrollable fit of sobbing. And
realising that, if matters had gone as far as that, there was little I
could do, I pressed her hand silently and left her.
* * * * *
But though it seemed hopeless I decided to persevere. I turned my steps
towards Wallace Chesney’s bungalow, resolved to make one appeal to
the man’s better feelings. He was in his sitting-room when I arrived,
polishing a putter; and it seemed significant to me, even in that tense
moment, that the putter was quite an ordinary one, such as any capable
player might use. In the brave old happy days of his dudhood, the only
putters you ever found in the society of Wallace Chesney were patent
self-adjusting things that looked like croquet mallets that had taken
the wrong turning in childhood.
“Well, Wallace, my boy,” I said.
“Hallo!” said Wallace Chesney. “So you’re back?”
We fell into conversation, and I had not been in the room two minutes
before I realised that what I had been told about the change in him was
nothing more than the truth. The man’s bearing and his every remark
were insufferably bumptious. He spoke of his prospects in the July
medal competition as if the issue were already settled. He scoffed at
his rivals.
I had some little difficulty in bringing the talk round to the matter
which I had come to discuss.
“My boy,” I said at length, “I have just heard the sad news.”
“What sad news?”
“I have been talking to Charlotte--”
“Oh, that!” said Wallace Chesney.
“She was telling me--”
“Perhaps it’s all for the best.”
“All for the best? What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Wallace, “one doesn’t wish, of course, to say anything
ungallant, but, after all, poor Charlotte’s handicap _is_ fourteen
and wouldn’t appear to have much chance of getting any lower. I mean,
there’s such a thing as a fellow throwing himself away.”
Was I revolted at these callous words? For a moment, yes. Then it
struck me that, though he had uttered them with a light laugh, that
laugh had had in it more than a touch of bravado. I looked at him
keenly. There was a bored, discontented expression in his eyes, a line
of pain about his mouth.
“My boy,” I said, gravely, “you are not happy.”
For an instant I think he would have denied the imputation. But my
visit had coincided with one of those twilight moods in which a man
requires, above all else, sympathy. He uttered a weary sigh.
“I’m fed up,” he admitted. “It’s a funny thing. When I was a dud, I
used to think how perfect it must be to be scratch. I used to watch
the cracks buzzing round the course and envy them. It’s all a fraud.
The only time when you enjoy golf is when an occasional decent shot is
enough to make you happy for the day. I’m plus two, and I’m bored to
death. I’m too good. And what’s the result? Everybody’s jealous of me.
Everybody’s got it in for me. Nobody loves me.”
His voice rose in a note of anguish, and at the sound his terrier,
which had been sleeping on the rug, crept forward and licked his hand.
“The dog loves you,” I said, gently, for I was touched.
“Yes, but I don’t love the dog,” said Wallace Chesney.
“Now come, Wallace,” I said. “Be reasonable, my boy. It is only your
unfortunate manner on the links which has made you perhaps a little
unpopular at the moment. Why not pull yourself up? Why ruin your whole
life with this arrogance? All that you need is a little tact, a little
forbearance. Charlotte, I am sure, is just as fond of you as ever, but
you have wounded her pride. Why must you be unkind about her tee-shots?”
Wallace Chesney shook his head despondently.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “It exasperates me to see any one foozling,
and I have to say so.”
“Then there is nothing to be done,” I said, sadly.
* * * * *
All the medal competitions at our club are, as you know, important
events; but, as you are also aware, none of them is looked forward to
so keenly or contested so hotly as the one in July. At the beginning
of the year of which I am speaking, Raymond Gandle had been considered
the probable winner of the fixture; but as the season progressed
and Wallace Chesney’s skill developed to such a remarkable extent
most of us were reluctantly inclined to put our money on the latter.
Reluctantly, because Wallace’s unpopularity was now so general that the
thought of his winning was distasteful to all. It grieved me to see
how cold his fellow-members were towards him. He drove off from the
first tee without a solitary hand-clap; and, though the drive was of
admirable quality and nearly carried the green, there was not a single
cheer. I noticed Charlotte Dix among the spectators. The poor girl was
looking sad and wan.
In the draw for partners Wallace had had Peter Willard allotted to
him; and he muttered to me in a quite audible voice that it was as bad
as handicapping him half-a-dozen strokes to make him play with such
a hopeless performer. I do not think Peter heard, but it would not
have made much difference to him if he had, for I doubt if anything
could have had much effect for the worse on his game. Peter Willard
always entered for the medal competition, because he said that
competition-play was good for the nerves.
On this occasion he topped his ball badly, and Wallace lit his pipe
with the exaggeratedly patient air of an irritated man. When Peter
topped his second also, Wallace was moved to speech.
“For goodness’ sake,” he snapped, “what’s the good of playing at all if
you insist on lifting your head? Keep it down, man, keep it down. You
don’t need to watch to see where the ball is going. It isn’t likely to
go as far as all that. Make up your mind to count three before you look
up.”
“Thanks,” said Peter, meekly. There was no pride in Peter to be
wounded. He knew the sort of player he was.
The couples were now moving off with smooth rapidity, and the course
was dotted with the figures of players and their accompanying
spectators. A fair proportion of these latter had decided to follow the
fortunes of Raymond Gandle, but by far the larger number were sticking
to Wallace, who right from the start showed that Gandle or any one
else would have to return a very fine card to beat him. He was out in
thirty-seven, two above bogey, and with the assistance of a superb
second, which landed the ball within a foot of the pin, got a three on
the tenth, where a four is considered good. I mention this to show
that by the time he arrived at the short lake-hole Wallace Chesney was
at the top of his form. Not even the fact that he had been obliged to
let the next couple through owing to Peter Willard losing his ball had
been enough to upset him.
* * * * *
The course has been rearranged since, but at that time the lake-hole,
which is now the second, was the eleventh, and was generally looked on
as the crucial hole in a medal round. Wallace no doubt realised this,
but the knowledge did not seem to affect him. He lit his pipe with the
utmost coolness: and, having replaced the match-box in his hip-pocket,
stood smoking nonchalantly as he waited for the couple in front to get
off the green.
They holed out eventually, and Wallace walked to the tee. As he did so,
he was startled to receive a resounding smack.
“Sorry,” said Peter Willard, apologetically. “Hope I didn’t hurt you. A
wasp.”
And he pointed to the corpse, which was lying in a used-up attitude on
the ground.
“Afraid it would sting you,” said Peter.
“Oh, thanks,” said Wallace.
He spoke a little stiffly, for Peter Willard had a large, hard, flat
hand, the impact of which had shaken him up considerably. Also, there
had been laughter in the crowd. He was fuming as he bent to address
his ball, and his annoyance became acute when, just as he reached the
top of his swing, Peter Willard suddenly spoke.
“Just a second, old man,” said Peter. Wallace spun round, outraged.
“What _is_ it? I do wish you would wait till I’ve made my shot.”
“Just as you like,” said Peter, humbly.
“There is no greater crime that a man can commit on the links than to
speak to a fellow when he’s making his stroke.”
“Of course, of course,” acquiesced Peter, crushed.
Wallace turned to his ball once more. He was vaguely conscious of a
discomfort to which he could not at the moment give a name. At first he
thought that he was having a spasm of lumbago, and this surprised him,
for he had never in his life been subject to even a suspicion of that
malady. A moment later he realised that this diagnosis had been wrong.
“Good heavens!” he cried, leaping nimbly some two feet into the air.
“I’m on fire!”
“Yes,” said Peter, delighted at his ready grasp of the situation.
“That’s what I wanted to mention just now.”
Wallace slapped vigorously at the seat of his Plus Fours.
“It must have been when I killed that wasp,” said Peter, beginning to
see clearly into the matter. “You had a match-box in your pocket.”
Wallace was in no mood to stop and discuss first causes. He was
springing up and down on his pyre, beating at the flames.
“Do you know what I should do if I were you?” said Peter Willard. “I
should jump into the lake.”
One of the cardinal rules of golf is that a player shall accept no
advice from any one but his own caddie; but the warmth about his lower
limbs had now become so generous that Wallace was prepared to stretch a
point. He took three rapid strides and entered the water with a splash.
The lake, though muddy, is not deep, and presently Wallace was to be
observed standing up to his waist some few feet from the shore.
“That ought to have put it out,” said Peter Willard. “It was a bit of
luck that it happened at this hole.” He stretched out a hand to the
bather. “Catch hold, old man, and I’ll pull you out.”
“No!” said Wallace Chesney.
“Why not?”
“Never mind!” said Wallace, austerely. He bent as near to Peter as he
was able.
“Send a caddie up to the club-house to fetch my grey flannel trousers
from my locker,” he whispered, tensely.
“Oh, ah!” said Peter.
It was some little time before Wallace, encircled by a group of male
spectators, was enabled to change his costume; and during the interval
he continued to stand waist-deep in the water, to the chagrin of
various couples who came to the tee in the course of their round and
complained with not a little bitterness that his presence there added
a mental hazard to an already difficult hole. Eventually, however, he
found himself back ashore, his ball before him, his mashie in his hand.
“Carry on,” said Peter Willard, as the couple in front left the green.
“All clear now.”
Wallace Chesney addressed his ball. And, even as he did so, he was
suddenly aware that an odd psychological change had taken place in
himself. He was aware of a strange weakness. The charred remains of the
Plus Fours were lying under an adjacent bush; and, clad in the old grey
flannels of his early golfing days, Wallace felt diffident, feeble,
uncertain of himself. It was as though virtue had gone out of him,
as if some indispensable adjunct to good play had been removed. His
corrugated trouser-leg caught his eye as he waggled, and all at once he
became acutely alive to the fact that many eyes were watching him. The
audience seemed to press on him like a blanket. He felt as he had been
wont to feel in the old days when he had had to drive off the first tee
in front of a terrace-full of scoffing critics.
The next moment his ball had bounded weakly over the intervening patch
of turf and was in the water.
“Hard luck!” said Peter Willard, ever a generous foe. And the words
seemed to touch some almost atrophied chord in Wallace’s breast.
A sudden love for his species flooded over him. Dashed decent of
Peter, he thought, to sympathise. Peter was a good chap. So were the
spectators good chaps. So was everybody, even his caddie.
Peter Willard, as if resolved to make his sympathy practical, also
rolled his ball into the lake.
“Hard luck!” said Wallace Chesney, and started as he said it; for many
weeks had passed since he had commiserated with an opponent. He felt a
changed man. A better, sweeter, kindlier man. It was as if a curse had
fallen from him.
He teed up another ball, and swung.
“Hard luck!” said Peter.
“Hard luck!” said Wallace, a moment later.
“Hard luck!” said Peter, a moment after that.
Wallace Chesney stood on the tee watching the spot in the water where
his third ball had fallen. The crowd was now openly amused, and, as he
listened to their happy laughter, it was borne in upon Wallace that he,
too, was amused and happy. A weird, almost effervescent exhilaration
filled him. He turned and beamed upon the spectators. He waved his
mashie cheerily at them. This, he felt, was something like golf. This
was golf as it should be--not the dull, mechanical thing which had
bored him during all these past weeks of his perfection, but a gay,
rollicking adventure. That was the soul of golf, the thing that made it
the wonderful pursuit it was--that speculativeness, that not knowing
where the dickens your ball was going when you hit it, that eternal
hoping for the best, that never-failing chanciness. It is better to
travel hopefully than to arrive, and at last this great truth had come
home to Wallace Chesney. He realised now why pros were all grave,
silent men who seemed to struggle manfully against some secret sorrow.
It was because they were too darned good. Golf had no surprises for
them, no gallant spirit of adventure.
“I’m going to get a ball over if I stay here all night,” cried Wallace
Chesney, gaily, and the crowd echoed his mirth. On the face of
Charlotte Dix was the look of a mother whose prodigal son has rolled
into the old home once more. She caught Wallace’s eye and gesticulated
to him blithely.
“The cripple says he’ll give you a stroke a hole, Wally!” she shouted.
“I’m ready for him!” bellowed Wallace.
“Hard _luck_!” said Peter Willard.
Under their bush the Plus Fours, charred and dripping, lurked
unnoticed. But Wallace Chesney saw them. They caught his eye as he
sliced his eleventh into the marshes on the right. It seemed to him
that they looked sullen. Disappointed. Baffled.
Wallace Chesney was himself again.
CHAPTER VI
THE AWAKENING OF ROLLO PODMARSH
Down on the new bowling-green behind the club-house some sort of
competition was in progress. The seats about the smooth strip of turf
were crowded, and the weak-minded yapping of the patients made itself
plainly audible to the Oldest Member as he sat in his favourite chair
in the smoking-room. He shifted restlessly, and a frown marred the
placidity of his venerable brow. To the Oldest Member a golf-club was
a golf-club, and he resented the introduction of any alien element. He
had opposed the institution of tennis-courts; and the suggestion of a
bowling-green had stirred him to his depths.
A young man in spectacles came into the smoking-room. His high forehead
was aglow, and he lapped up a ginger-ale with the air of one who
considers that he has earned it.
“Capital exercise!” he said, beaming upon the Oldest Member.
The Oldest Member laid down his _Vardon On Casual Water_, and peered
suspiciously at his companion.
“What did you go round in?” he asked.
“Oh, I wasn’t playing golf,” said the young man. “Bowls.”
“A nauseous pursuit!” said the Oldest Member, coldly, and resumed his
reading.
The young man seemed nettled.
“I don’t know why you should say that,” he retorted. “It’s a splendid
game.”
“I rank it,” said the Oldest Member, “with the juvenile pastime of
marbles.”
The young man pondered for some moments.
“Well, anyway,” he said at length, “it was good enough for Drake.”
“As I have not the pleasure of the acquaintance of your friend Drake, I
am unable to estimate the value of his endorsement.”
“_The_ Drake. The Spanish Armada Drake. He was playing bowls on
Plymouth Hoe when they told him that the Armada was in sight. ‘There
is time to finish the game,’ he replied. That’s what Drake thought of
bowls.”
“If he had been a golfer he would have ignored the Armada altogether.”
“It’s easy enough to say that,” said the young man, with spirit, “but
can the history of golf show a parallel case?”
“A million, I should imagine.”
“But you’ve forgotten them, eh?” said the young man, satirically.
“On the contrary,” said the Oldest Member. “As a typical instance,
neither more nor less remarkable than a hundred others, I will select
the story of Rollo Podmarsh.” He settled himself comfortably in his
chair, and placed the tips of his fingers together. “This Rollo
Podmarsh--”
“No, I say!” protested the young man, looking at his watch.
“This Rollo Podmarsh--”
“Yes, but--”
This Rollo Podmarsh (said the Oldest Member) was the only son of his
mother, and she was a widow; and like other young men in that position
he had rather allowed a mother’s tender care to take the edge off what
you might call his rugged manliness. Not to put too fine a point on it,
he had permitted his parent to coddle him ever since he had been in the
nursery; and now, in his twenty-eighth year, he invariably wore flannel
next his skin, changed his shoes the moment they got wet, and--from
September to May, inclusive--never went to bed without partaking of a
bowl of hot arrowroot. Not, you would say, the stuff of which heroes
are made. But you would be wrong. Rollo Podmarsh was a golfer, and
consequently pure gold at heart; and in his hour of crisis all the good
in him came to the surface.
In giving you this character-sketch of Rollo, I have been at pains
to make it crisp, for I observe that you are wriggling in a restless
manner and you persist in pulling out that watch of yours and gazing
at it. Let me tell you that, if a mere skeleton outline of the man has
this effect upon you, I am glad for your sake that you never met his
mother. Mrs. Podmarsh could talk with enjoyment for hours on end about
her son’s character and habits. And, on the September evening on which
I introduce her to you, though she had, as a fact, been speaking only
for some ten minutes, it had seemed like hours to the girl, Mary Kent,
who was the party of the second part to the conversation.
Mary Kent was the daughter of an old school-friend of Mrs. Podmarsh,
and she had come to spend the autumn and winter with her while her
parents were abroad. The scheme had never looked particularly good to
Mary, and after ten minutes of her hostess on the subject of Rollo she
was beginning to weave dreams of knotted sheets and a swift getaway
through the bedroom window in the dark of the night.
“He is a strict teetotaller,” said Mrs. Podmarsh.
“Really?”
“And has never smoked in his life.”
“Fancy that!”
“But here is the dear boy now,” said Mrs. Podmarsh, fondly.
* * * * *
Down the road towards them was coming a tall, well-knit figure in a
Norfolk coat and grey flannel trousers. Over his broad shoulders was
suspended a bag of golf-clubs.
“Is _that_ Mr. Podmarsh?” exclaimed Mary.
She was surprised. After all she had been listening to about the
arrowroot and the flannel next the skin and the rest of it, she had
pictured the son of the house as a far weedier specimen. She had been
expecting to meet a small, slender young man with an eyebrow moustache,
and pince-nez; and this person approaching might have stepped straight
out of Jack Dempsey’s training-camp.
“Does he play golf?” asked Mary, herself an enthusiast.
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Podmarsh. “He makes a point of going out on the
links once a day. He says the fresh air gives him such an appetite.”
Mary, who had taken a violent dislike to Rollo on the evidence of
his mother’s description of his habits, had softened towards him on
discovering that he was a golfer. She now reverted to her previous
opinion. A man who could play the noble game from such ignoble motives
was beyond the pale.
“Rollo is exceedingly good at golf,” proceeded Mrs. Podmarsh. “He
scores more than a hundred and twenty every time, while Mr. Burns, who
is supposed to be one of the best players in the club, seldom manages
to reach eighty. But Rollo is very modest--modesty is one of his best
qualities--and you would never guess he was so skilful unless you were
told.”
“Well, Rollo darling, did you have a nice game? You didn’t get your
feet wet, I hope? This is Mary Kent, dear.”
Rollo Podmarsh shook hands with Mary. And at her touch the strange
dizzy feeling which had come over him at the sight of her suddenly
became increased a thousand-fold. As I see that you are consulting your
watch once more, I will not describe his emotions as exhaustively as
I might. I will merely say that he had never felt anything resembling
this sensation of dazed ecstasy since the occasion when a twenty-foot
putt of his, which had been going well off the line, as his putts
generally did, had hit a worm-cast sou’-sou’-east of the hole and
popped in, giving him a snappy six. Rollo Podmarsh, as you will have
divined, was in love at first sight. Which makes it all the sadder to
think Mary at the moment was regarding him as an outcast and a blister.
Mrs. Podmarsh, having enfolded her son in a vehement embrace, drew back
with a startled exclamation, sniffing.
“Rollo!” she cried. “You smell of tobacco smoke.”
Rollo looked embarrassed.
“Well, the fact is, mother--”
A hard protuberance in his coat-pocket attracted Mrs. Podmarsh’s
notice. She swooped and drew out a big-bowled pipe.
“Rollo!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“Well, the fact is, mother--”
“Don’t you know,” cried Mrs. Podmarsh, “that smoking is poisonous, and
injurious to the health?”
“Yes. But the fact is, mother--”
“It causes nervous dyspepsia, sleeplessness, gnawing of the stomach,
headache, weak eyes, red spots on the skin, throat irritation,
asthma, bronchitis, heart failure, lung trouble, catarrh, melancholy,
neurasthenia, loss of memory, impaired will-power, rheumatism, lumbago,
sciatica, neuritis, heartburn, torpid liver, loss of appetite,
enervation, lassitude, lack of ambition, and falling out of hair.”
“Yes, I know, mother. But the fact is, Ted Ray smokes all the time he’s
playing, and I thought it might improve my game.”
And it was at these splendid words that Mary Kent felt for the
first time that something might be made of Rollo Podmarsh. That she
experienced one-millionth of the fervour which was gnawing at his
vitals I will not say. A woman does not fall in love in a flash like
a man. But at least she no longer regarded him with loathing. On the
contrary, she found herself liking him. There was, she considered, the
right stuff in Rollo. And if, as seemed probable from his mother’s
conversation, it would take a bit of digging to bring it up, well--she
liked rescue-work and had plenty of time.
* * * * *
Mr. Arnold Bennett, in a recent essay, advises young bachelors to
proceed with a certain caution in matters of the heart. They should,
he asserts, first decide whether or not they are ready for love; then,
whether it is better to marry earlier or later; thirdly, whether their
ambitions are such that a wife will prove a hindrance to their career.
These romantic preliminaries concluded, they may grab a girl and go to
it. Rollo Podmarsh would have made a tough audience for these precepts.
Since the days of Antony and Cleopatra probably no one had ever got
more swiftly off the mark. One may say that he was in love before he
had come within two yards of the girl. And each day that passed found
him more nearly up to his eyebrows in the tender emotion.
He thought of Mary when he was changing his wet shoes; he dreamed of
her while putting flannel next his skin; he yearned for her over the
evening arrowroot. Why, the man was such a slave to his devotion that
he actually went to the length of purloining small articles belonging
to her. Two days after Mary’s arrival Rollo Podmarsh was driving off
the first tee with one of her handkerchiefs, a powder-puff, and a dozen
hairpins secreted in his left breast-pocket. When dressing for dinner
he used to take them out and look at them, and at night he slept with
them under his pillow. Heavens, how he loved that girl!
One evening when they had gone out into the garden together to look at
the new moon--Rollo, by his mother’s advice, wearing a woollen scarf
to protect his throat--he endeavoured to bring the conversation round
to the important subject. Mary’s last remark had been about earwigs.
Considered as a cue, it lacked a subtle something; but Rollo was not
the man to be discouraged by that.
“Talking of earwigs, Miss Kent,” he said, in a low musical voice, “have
you ever been in love?”
Mary was silent for a moment before replying.
“Yes, once. When I was eleven. With a conjurer who came to perform at
my birthday-party. He took a rabbit and two eggs out of my hair, and
life seemed one grand sweet song.”
“Never since then?”
“Never.”
“Suppose--just for the sake of argument--suppose you ever did love any
one--er--what sort of a man would it be?”
“A hero,” said Mary, promptly.
“A hero?” said Rollo, somewhat taken aback. “What sort of hero?”
“Any sort. I could only love a really brave man--a man who had done
some wonderful heroic action.”
“Shall we go in?” said Rollo, hoarsely. “The air is a little chilly.”
We have now, therefore, arrived at a period in Rollo Podmarsh’s career
which might have inspired those lines of Henley’s about “the night that
covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole.” What with one thing and
another, he was in an almost Job-like condition of despondency. I say
“one thing and another,” for it was not only hopeless love that weighed
him down. In addition to being hopelessly in love, he was greatly
depressed about his golf.
* * * * *
On Rollo in his capacity of golfer I have so far not dwelt. You have
probably allowed yourself, in spite of the significant episode of the
pipe, to dismiss him as one of those placid, contented--shall I say
dilettante?--golfers who are so frequent in these degenerate days.
Such was not the case. Outwardly placid, Rollo was consumed inwardly
by an ever-burning fever of ambition. His aims were not extravagant.
He did not want to become amateur champion, nor even to win a monthly
medal; but he did, with his whole soul, desire one of these days to
go round the course in under a hundred. This feat accomplished, it
was his intention to set the seal on his golfing career by playing a
real money-match; and already he had selected his opponent, a certain
Colonel Bodger, a tottery performer of advanced years who for the last
decade had been a martyr to lumbago.
But it began to look as if even the modest goal he had marked out for
himself were beyond his powers. Day after day he would step on to the
first tee, glowing with zeal and hope, only to crawl home in the quiet
evenfall with another hundred and twenty on his card. Little wonder,
then, that he began to lose his appetite and would moan feebly at the
sight of a poached egg.
With Mrs. Podmarsh sedulously watching over her son’s health, you
might have supposed that this inability on his part to teach the
foodstuffs to take a joke would have caused consternation in the home.
But it so happened that Rollo’s mother had recently been reading a
medical treatise in which an eminent physician stated that we all
eat too much nowadays, and that the secret of a happy life is to lay
off the carbohydrates to some extent. She was, therefore, delighted
to observe the young man’s moderation in the matter of food, and
frequently held him up as an example to be noted and followed by little
Lettice Willoughby, her grand-daughter, who was a good and consistent
trencherwoman, particularly rough on the puddings. Little Lettice, I
should mention, was the daughter of Rollo’s sister Enid, who lived in
the neighbourhood. Mrs. Willoughby had been compelled to go away on
a visit a few days before and had left her child with Mrs. Podmarsh
during her absence.
You can fool some of the people all the time, but Lettice Willoughby
was not of the type that is easily deceived. A nice, old-fashioned
child would no doubt have accepted without questioning her
grand-mother’s dictum that roly-poly pudding could not fail to hand a
devastating wallop to the blood-pressure, and that to take two helpings
of it was practically equivalent to walking right into the family
vault. A child with less decided opinions of her own would have been
impressed by the spectacle of her uncle refusing sustenance, and would
have received without demur the statement that he did it because he
felt that abstinence was good for his health. Lettice was a modern
child and knew better. She had had experience of this loss of appetite
and its significance. The first symptom which had preceded the demise
of poor old Ponto, who had recently handed in his portfolio after
holding office for ten years as the Willoughby family dog, had been
this same disinclination to absorb nourishment. Besides, she was an
observant child, and had not failed to note the haggard misery in her
uncle’s eyes. She tackled him squarely on the subject one morning after
breakfast. Rollo had retired into the more distant parts of the garden,
and was leaning forward, when she found him, with his head buried in
his hands.
“Hallo, uncle,” said Lettice.
Rollo looked up wanly.
“Ah, child!” he said. He was fond of his niece.
“Aren’t you feeling well, uncle?”
“Far, far from well.”
“It’s old age, I expect,” said Lettice.
“I feel old,” admitted Rollo. “Old and battered. Ah, Lettice, laugh and
be gay while you can.”
“All right, uncle.”
“Make the most of your happy, careless, smiling, halcyon childhood.”
“Right-o, uncle.”
“When you get to my age, dear, you will realise that it is a sad,
hopeless world. A world where, if you keep your head down, you forget
to let the club-head lead: where even if you do happen by a miracle
to keep ’em straight with your brassie, you blow up on the green and
foozle a six-inch putt.”
Lettice could not quite understand what Uncle Rollo was talking about,
but she gathered broadly that she had been correct in supposing him to
be in a bad state, and her warm, childish heart was filled with pity
for him. She walked thoughtfully away, and Rollo resumed his reverie.
Into each life, as the poet says, some rain must fall. So much had
recently been falling into Rollo’s that, when Fortune at last sent
along a belated sunbeam, it exercised a cheering effect out of all
proportion to its size. By this I mean that when, some four days after
his conversation with Lettice, Mary Kent asked him to play golf with
her, he read into the invitation a significance which only a lover
could have seen in it. I will not go so far as to say that Rollo
Podmarsh looked on Mary Kent’s suggestion that they should have a round
together as actually tantamount to a revelation of undying love; but he
certainly regarded it as a most encouraging sign. It seemed to him that
things were beginning to move, that Rollo Preferred were on a rising
market. Gone was the gloom of the past days. He forgot those sad,
solitary wanderings of his in the bushes at the bottom of the garden;
he forgot that his mother had bought him a new set of winter woollies
which felt like horsehair; he forgot that for the last few evenings
his arrowroot had tasted rummy. His whole mind was occupied with the
astounding fact that she had voluntarily offered to play golf with him,
and he walked out on to the first tee filled with a yeasty exhilaration
which nearly caused him to burst into song.
“How shall we play?” asked Mary. “I am a twelve. What is your handicap?”
Rollo was under the disadvantage of not actually possessing a handicap.
He had a sort of private system of book-keeping of his own by which he
took strokes over if they did not seem to him to be up to sample, and
allowed himself five-foot putts at discretion. So he had never actually
handed in the three cards necessary for handicapping purposes.
“I don’t exactly know,” he said. “It’s my ambition to get round in
under a hundred, but I’ve never managed it yet.”
“Never?”
“Never! It’s strange, but something always seems to go wrong.”
“Perhaps you’ll manage it to-day,” said Mary, encouragingly, so
encouragingly that it was all that Rollo could do to refrain from
flinging himself at her feet and barking like a dog. “Well, I’ll start
you two holes up, and we’ll see how we get on. Shall I take the honour?”
She drove off one of those fair-to-medium balls which go with a twelve
handicap. Not a great length, but nice and straight.
“Splendid!” cried Rollo, devoutly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mary. “I wouldn’t call it anything special.”
Titanic emotions were surging in Rollo’s bosom as he addressed his
ball. He had never felt like this before, especially on the first
tee--where as a rule he found himself overcome with a nervous humility.
“Oh, Mary! Mary!” he breathed to himself as he swung.
You who squander your golden youth fooling about on a bowling-green
will not understand the magic of those three words. But if you were a
golfer, you would realise that in selecting just that invocation to
breathe to himself Rollo Podmarsh had hit, by sheer accident, on the
ideal method of achieving a fine drive. Let me explain. The first two
words, tensely breathed, are just sufficient to take a man with the
proper slowness to the top of his swing; the first syllable of the
second “Mary” exactly coincides with the striking of the ball; and that
final “ry!” takes care of the follow-through. The consequence was that
Rollo’s ball, instead of hopping down the hill like an embarrassed
duck, as was its usual practice, sang off the tee with a scream like
a shell, nodded in passing Mary’s ball, where it lay some hundred and
fifty yards down the course, and, carrying on from there, came to rest
within easy distance of the green. For the first time in his golfing
life Rollo Podmarsh had hit a nifty.
Mary followed the ball’s flight with astonished eyes.
“But this will never do!” she exclaimed. “I can’t possibly start you
two up if you’re going to do this sort of thing.”
Rollo blushed.
“I shouldn’t think it would happen again,” he said. “I’ve never done a
drive like that before.”
“But it must happen again,” said Mary, firmly. “This is evidently your
day. If you don’t get round in under a hundred to-day, I shall never
forgive you.”
Rollo shut his eyes, and his lips moved feverishly. He was registering
a vow that, come what might, he would not fail her. A minute later he
was holing out in three, one under bogey.
The second hole is the short lake-hole. Bogey is three, and Rollo
generally did it in four; for it was his custom not to count any balls
he might sink in the water, but to start afresh with one which happened
to get over, and then take three putts. But to-day something seemed to
tell him that he would not require the aid of this ingenious system. As
he took his mashie from the bag, he _knew_ that his first shot would
soar successfully on to the green.
“Ah, Mary!” he breathed as he swung.
These subtleties are wasted on a worm, if you will pardon the
expression, like yourself, who, possibly owing to a defective
education, is content to spend life’s springtime rolling wooden balls
across a lawn; but I will explain that in altering and shortening his
soliloquy at this juncture Rollo had done the very thing any good
pro. would have recommended. If he had murmured, “Oh, Mary! Mary!” as
before he would have over-swung. “Ah, Mary!” was exactly right for a
half-swing with the mashie. His ball shot up in a beautiful arc, and
trickled to within six inches of the hole.
Mary was delighted. There was something about this big, diffident
man which had appealed from the first to everything in her that was
motherly.
“Marvellous!” she said. “You’ll get a two. Five for the first two
holes! Why, you simply must get round in under a hundred now.” She
swung, but too lightly; and her ball fell in the water. “I’ll give
you this,” she said, without the slightest chagrin, for this girl had
a beautiful nature. “Let’s get on to the third. Four up! Why, you’re
wonderful!”
And not to weary you with too much detail, I will simply remark that,
stimulated by her gentle encouragement, Rollo Podmarsh actually came
off the ninth green with a medal score of forty-six for the half-round.
A ten on the seventh had spoiled his card to some extent, and a nine on
the eighth had not helped, but nevertheless here he was in forty-six,
with the easier half of the course before him. He tingled all
over--partly because he was wearing the new winter woollies to which I
have alluded previously, but principally owing to triumph, elation, and
love. He gazed at Mary as Dante might have gazed at Beatrice on one of
his particularly sentimental mornings.
Mary uttered an exclamation.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” she exclaimed. “I promised to write last
night to Jane Simpson and give her that new formula for knitting
jumpers. I think I’ll ’phone her now from the club-house and then it’ll
be off my mind. You go on to the tenth, and I’ll join you there.”
Rollo proceeded over the brow of the hill to the tenth tee, and was
filling in the time with practice-swings when he heard his name spoken.
“Good gracious, Rollo! I couldn’t believe it was you at first.”
He turned to see his sister, Mrs. Willoughby, the mother of the child
Lettice.
“Hallo!” he said. “When did you get back?”
“Late last night. Why, it’s extraordinary!”
“Hope you had a good time. What’s extraordinary? Listen, Enid. Do you
know what I’ve done? Forty-six for the first nine! Forty-six! And
holing out every putt.”
“Oh, then that accounts for it.”
“Accounts for what?”
“Why, your looking so pleased with life. I got an idea from Letty, when
she wrote to me, that you were at death’s door. Your gloom seems to
have made a deep impression on the child. Her letter was full of it.”
Rollo was moved.
“Dear little Letty! She is wonderfully sympathetic.”
“Well, I must be off now,” said Enid Willoughby. “I’m late. Oh, talking
of Letty. Don’t children say the funniest things! She wrote in her
letter that you were very old and wretched and that she was going to
put you out of your misery.”
“Ha ha ha!” laughed Rollo.
“We had to poison poor old Ponto the other day, you know, and poor
little Letty was inconsolable till we explained to her that it was
really the kindest thing to do, because he was so old and ill. But just
imagine her thinking of wanting to end _your_ sufferings!”
“Ha ha!” laughed Rollo. “Ha ha h--”
His voice trailed off into a broken gurgle. Quite suddenly a sinister
thought had come to him.
_The arrowroot had tasted rummy!_
“Why, what on earth is the matter?” asked Mrs. Willoughby, regarding
his ashen face.
Rollo could find no words. He yammered speechlessly. Yes, for several
nights the arrowroot had tasted very rummy. Rummy! There was no
other adjective. Even as he plied the spoon he had said to himself:
“This arrowroot tastes rummy!” And--he uttered a sharp yelp as he
remembered--it had been little Lettice who had brought it to him. He
recollected being touched at the time by the kindly act.
“What _is_ the matter, Rollo?” demanded Mrs. Willoughby, sharply.
“Don’t stand there looking like a dying duck.”
“I am a dying duck,” responded Rollo, hoarsely. “A dying man, I mean.
Enid, that infernal child has poisoned me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! And kindly don’t speak of her like that!”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t blame her, I suppose. No doubt her motives were
good. But the fact remains.”
“Rollo, you’re too absurd.”
“But the arrowroot tasted rummy.”
“I never knew you could be such an idiot,” said his exasperated sister
with sisterly outspokenness. “I thought you would think it quaint. I
thought you would roar with laughter.”
“I did--till I remembered about the rumminess of the arrowroot.”
Mrs. Willoughby uttered an impatient exclamation and walked away.
Rollo Podmarsh stood on the tenth tee, a volcano of mixed emotions.
Mechanically he pulled out his pipe and lit it. But he found that he
could not smoke. In this supreme crisis of his life tobacco seemed
to have lost its magic. He put the pipe back in his pocket and gave
himself up to his thoughts. Now terror gripped him; anon a sort of
gentle melancholy. It was so hard that he should be compelled to leave
the world just as he had begun to hit ’em right.
And then in the welter of his thoughts there came one of practical
value. To wit, that by hurrying to the doctor’s without delay he might
yet be saved. There might be antidotes.
He turned to go and there was Mary Kent standing beside him with her
bright, encouraging smile.
“I’m sorry I kept you so long,” she said. “It’s your honour. Fire away,
and remember that you’ve got to do this nine in fifty-three at the
outside.”
Rollo’s thoughts flitted wistfully to the snug surgery where Dr. Brown
was probably sitting at this moment surrounded by the finest antidotes.
“Do you know, I think I ought to--”
“Of course you ought to,” said Mary. “If you did the first nine in
forty-six, you can’t possibly take fifty-three coming in.”
For one long moment Rollo continued to hesitate--a moment during which
the instinct of self-preservation seemed as if it must win the day. All
his life he had been brought up to be nervous about his health, and
panic gripped him. But there is a deeper, nobler instinct than that of
self-preservation--the instinctive desire of a golfer who is at the top
of his form to go on and beat his medal-score record. And little by
little this grand impulse began to dominate Rollo. If, he felt, he went
off now to take antidotes, the doctor might possibly save his life; but
reason told him that never again would he be likely to do the first
nine in forty-six. He would have to start all over afresh.
Rollo Podmarsh hesitated no longer. With a pale, set face he teed up
his ball and drove.
* * * * *
If I were telling this story to a golfer instead of to an
excrescence--I use the word in the kindliest spirit--who spends his
time messing about on a bowling-green, nothing would please me better
than to describe shot by shot Rollo’s progress over the remaining nine
holes. Epics have been written with less material. But these details
would, I am aware, be wasted on you. Let it suffice that by the time
his last approach trickled on to the eighteenth green he had taken
exactly fifty shots.
“Three for it!” said Mary Kent. “Steady now! Take it quite easy and be
sure to lay your second dead.”
It was prudent counsel, but Rollo was now thoroughly above himself.
He had got his feet wet in a puddle on the sixteenth, but he did not
care. His winter woollies seemed to be lined with ants, but he ignored
them. All he knew was that he was on the last green in ninety-six, and
he meant to finish in style. No tame three putts for him! His ball was
five yards away, but he aimed for the back of the hole and brought his
putter down with a whack. Straight and true the ball sped, hit the tin,
jumped high in the air, and fell into the hole with a rattle.
“Oo!” cried Mary.
Rollo Podmarsh wiped his forehead and leaned dizzily on his putter. For
a moment, so intense is the fervour induced by the game of games, all
he could think of was that he had gone round in ninety-seven. Then,
as one waking from a trance, he began to appreciate his position. The
fever passed, and a clammy dismay took possession of him. He had
achieved his life’s ambition; but what now? Already he was conscious of
a curious discomfort within him. He felt as he supposed Italians of the
Middle Ages must have felt after dropping in to take pot-luck with the
Borgias. It was hard. He had gone round in ninety-seven, but he could
never take the next step in the career which he had mapped out in his
dreams--the money-match with the lumbago-stricken Colonel Bodger.
Mary Kent was fluttering round him, bubbling congratulations, but Rollo
sighed.
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much. But the trouble is, I’m afraid
I’m going to die almost immediately. I’ve been poisoned!”
“Poisoned!”
“Yes. Nobody is to blame. Everything was done with the best intentions.
But there it is.”
“But I don’t understand.”
Rollo explained. Mary listened pallidly.
“Are you sure?” she gasped.
“Quite sure,” said Rollo, gravely. “The arrowroot tasted rummy.”
“But arrowroot always does.”
Rollo shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It tastes like warm blotting-paper, but not rummy.”
Mary was sniffing.
“Don’t cry,” urged Rollo, tenderly. “Don’t cry.”
“But I must. And I’ve come out without a handkerchief.”
“Permit me,” said Rollo, producing one of her best from his left
breast-pocket.
“I wish I had a powder-puff,” said Mary.
“Allow me,” said Rollo. “And your hair has become a little disordered.
If I may--” And from the same reservoir he drew a handful of hairpins.
Mary gazed at these exhibits with astonishment.
“But these are mine,” she said.
“Yes. I sneaked them from time to time.”
“But why?”
“Because I loved you,” said Rollo. And in a few moving sentences which
I will not trouble you with he went on to elaborate this theme.
Mary listened with her heart full of surging emotions, which I cannot
possibly go into if you persist in looking at that damned watch of
yours. The scales had fallen from her eyes. She had thought slightingly
of this man because he had been a little over-careful of his health,
and all the time he had had within him the potentiality of heroism.
Something seemed to snap inside her.
“Rollo!” she cried, and flung herself into his arms.
“Mary!” muttered Rollo, gathering her up.
“I told you it was all nonsense,” said Mrs. Willoughby, coming up at
this tense moment and going on with the conversation where she had left
off. “I’ve just seen Letty, and she said she meant to put you out of
your misery but the chemist wouldn’t sell her any poison, so she let it
go.”
Rollo disentangled himself from Mary.
“What?” he cried.
Mrs. Willoughby repeated her remarks.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then why did the arrowroot taste rummy?”
“I made inquiries about that. It seems that mother was worried
about your taking to smoking, and she found an advertisement in one
of the magazines about the Tobacco Habit Cured in Three Days by a
secret method without the victim’s knowledge. It was a gentle, safe,
agreeable method of eliminating the nicotine poison from the system,
strengthening the weakened membranes, and overcoming the craving; so
she put some in your arrowroot every night.”
There was a long silence. To Rollo Podmarsh it seemed as though the sun
had suddenly begun to shine, the birds to sing, and the grasshoppers
to toot. All Nature was one vast substantial smile. Down in the valley
by the second hole he caught sight of Wallace Chesney’s Plus Fours
gleaming as their owner stooped to play his shot, and it seemed to him
that he had never in his life seen anything so lovely.
“Mary,” he said, in a low, vibrant voice, “will you wait here for me?
I want to go into the club-house for a moment.”
“To change your wet shoes?”
“No!” thundered Rollo. “I’m never going to change my wet shoes again in
my life.” He felt in his pocket, and hurled a box of patent pills far
into the undergrowth. “But I _am_ going to change my winter woollies.
And when I’ve put those dashed barbed-wire entanglements into the
club-house furnace, I’m going to ’phone to old Colonel Bodger. I hear
his lumbago’s worse than ever. I’m going to fix up a match with him for
a shilling a hole. And if I don’t lick the boots off him you can break
the engagement!”
“My hero!” murmured Mary.
Rollo kissed her, and with long, resolute steps strode to the
club-house.
CHAPTER VII
RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY
There was a sound of revelry by night, for the first Saturday in June
had arrived and the Golf Club was holding its monthly dance. Fairy
lanterns festooned the branches of the chestnut trees on the terrace
above the ninth green, and from the big dining-room, cleared now of its
tables and chairs, came a muffled slithering of feet and the plaintive
sound of saxophones moaning softly like a man who has just missed a
short putt. In a basket-chair in the shadows, the Oldest Member puffed
a cigar and listened, well content. His was the peace of the man who
has reached the age when he is no longer expected to dance.
A door opened, and a young man came out of the club-house. He stood
on the steps with folded arms, gazing to left and right. The Oldest
Member, watching him from the darkness, noted that he wore an air of
gloom. His brow was furrowed and he had the indefinable look of one who
has been smitten in the spiritual solar plexus.
Yes, where all around him was joy, jollity, and song, this young man
brooded.
The sound of a high tenor voice, talking rapidly and entertainingly on
the subject of modern Russian thought, now intruded itself on the peace
of the night. From the farther end of the terrace a girl came into the
light of the lantern, her arm in that of a second young man. She was
small and pretty, he tall and intellectual. The light shone on his
forehead and glittered on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. The girl
was gazing up at him with reverence and adoration, and at the sight of
these twain the youth on the steps appeared to undergo some sort of
spasm. His face became contorted and he wobbled. Then, with a gesture
of sublime despair, he tripped over the mat and stumbled back into
the club-house. The couple passed on and disappeared, and the Oldest
Member had the night to himself, until the door opened once more and
the club’s courteous and efficient secretary trotted down the steps.
The scent of the cigar drew him to where the Oldest Member sat, and he
dropped into the chair beside him.
“Seen young Ramage to-night?” asked the secretary.
“He was standing on those steps only a moment ago,” replied the Oldest
Member. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought perhaps you might have had a talk with him and found out
what’s the matter. Can’t think what’s come to him to-night. Nice, civil
boy as a rule, but just now, when I was trying to tell him about my
short approach on the fifth this afternoon, he was positively abrupt.
Gave a sort of hollow gasp and dashed away in the middle of a sentence.”
The Oldest Member sighed.
“You must overlook his brusqueness,” he said. “The poor lad is passing
through a trying time. A short while back I was the spectator of a
little drama that explains everything. Mabel Patmore is flirting
disgracefully with that young fellow Purvis.”
“Purvis? Oh, you mean the man who won the club Bowls Championship last
week?”
“I can quite believe that he may have disgraced himself in the manner
you describe,” said the Sage, coldly. “I know he plays that noxious
game. And it is for that reason that I hate to see a nice girl like
Mabel Patmore, who only needs a little more steadiness off the tee
to become a very fair golfer, wasting her time on him. I suppose his
attraction lies in the fact that he has a great flow of conversation,
while poor Ramage is, one must admit, more or less of a dumb Isaac.
Girls are too often snared by a glib tongue. Still, it is a pity,
a great pity. The whole affair recalls irresistibly to my mind the
story--”
The secretary rose with a whirr like a rocketing pheasant.
“--the story,” continued the Sage, “of Jane Packard, William Bates,
and Rodney Spelvin--which, as you have never heard it, I will now
proceed to relate.”
“Can’t stop now, much as I should like--”
“It is a theory of mine,” proceeded the Oldest Member, attaching
himself to the other’s coat-tails, and pulling him gently back into his
seat, “that nothing but misery can come of the union between a golfer
and an outcast whose soul has not been purified by the noblest of
games. This is well exemplified by the story of Jane Packard, William
Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
“All sorts of things to look after--”
“That is why I am hoping so sincerely that there is nothing more
serious than a temporary flirtation in this business of Mabel Patmore
and bowls-playing Purvis. A girl in whose life golf has become a
factor, would be mad to trust her happiness to a blister whose idea of
enjoyment is trundling wooden balls across a lawn. Sooner or later he
is certain to fail her in some crisis. Lucky for her if this failure
occurs before the marriage knot has been inextricably tied and so
opens her eyes to his inadequacy--as was the case in the matter of
Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin. I will now,” said the
Oldest Member, “tell you all about Jane Packard, William Bates, and
Rodney Spelvin.”
The secretary uttered a choking groan.
“I shall miss the next dance,” he pleaded.
“A bit of luck for some nice girl,” said the Sage, equably.
He tightened his grip on the other’s arm.
* * * * *
Jane Packard and William Bates (said the Oldest Member) were not, you
must understand, officially engaged. They had grown up together from
childhood, and there existed between them a sort of understanding--the
understanding being that, if ever William could speed himself up enough
to propose, Jane would accept him, and they would settle down and
live stodgily and happily ever after. For William was not one of your
rapid wooers. In his affair of the heart he moved somewhat slowly and
ponderously, like a motor-lorry, an object which both in physique and
temperament he greatly resembled. He was an extraordinarily large,
powerful, ox-like young man, who required plenty of time to make up his
mind about any given problem. I have seen him in the club dining-room
musing with a thoughtful frown for fifteen minutes on end while
endeavouring to weigh the rival merits of a chump chop and a sirloin
steak as a luncheon dish. A placid, leisurely man, I might almost call
him lymphatic. I _will_ call him lymphatic. He was lymphatic.
The first glimmering of an idea that Jane might possibly be a suitable
wife for him had come to William some three years before this story
opens. Having brooded on the matter tensely for six months, he then
sent her a bunch of roses. In the October of the following year,
nothing having occurred to alter his growing conviction that she was
an attractive girl, he presented her with a two-pound box of assorted
chocolates. And from then on his progress, though not rapid, was
continuous, and there seemed little reason to doubt that, should
nothing come about to weaken Jane’s regard for him, another five years
or so would see the matter settled.
And it did not appear likely that anything would weaken Jane’s regard.
They had much in common, for she was a calm, slow-moving person, too.
They had a mutual devotion to golf, and played together every day; and
the fact that their handicaps were practically level formed a strong
bond. Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband
is too markedly superior to his wife at golf; this leading him, when
she starts criticising his relations, to say bitter and unforgivable
things about her mashie-shots. Nothing of this kind could happen with
William and Jane. They would build their life on a solid foundation
of sympathy and understanding. The years would find them consoling
and encouraging each other, happy married lovers. If, that is to say,
William ever got round to proposing.
It was not until the fourth year of this romance that I detected the
first sign of any alteration in the schedule. I had happened to call
on the Packards one afternoon and found them all out except Jane. She
gave me tea and conversed for a while, but she seemed distrait. I had
known her since she wore rompers, so felt entitled to ask if there was
anything wrong.
“Not exactly wrong,” said Jane, and she heaved a sigh.
“Tell me,” I said.
She heaved another sigh.
“Have you ever read _The Love that Scorches_, by Luella Periton
Phipps?” she asked.
I said I had not.
“I got it out of the library yesterday,” said Jane, dreamily, “and
finished it at three this morning in bed. It is a very, very beautiful
book. It is all about the desert and people riding on camels and a
wonderful Arab chief with stern, yet tender, eyes, and a girl called
Angela, and oases and dates and mirages, and all like that. There is
a chapter where the Arab chief seizes the girl and clasps her in his
arms and she feels his hot breath searing her face and he flings her on
his horse and they ride off and all around was sand and night, and the
mysterious stars. And somehow--oh, I don’t know--”
She gazed yearningly at the chandelier.
“I wish mother would take me to Algiers next winter,” she murmured,
absently. “It would do her rheumatism so much good.”
I went away frankly uneasy. These novelists, I felt, ought to be more
careful. They put ideas into girls’ heads and made them dissatisfied. I
determined to look William up and give him a kindly word of advice. It
was no business of mine, you may say, but they were so ideally suited
to one another that it seemed a tragedy that anything should come
between them. And Jane was in a strange mood. At any moment, I felt,
she might take a good, square look at William and wonder what she could
ever have seen in him. I hurried to the boy’s cottage.
“William,” I said, “as one who dandled you on his knee when you were a
baby, I wish to ask you a personal question. Answer me this, and make
it snappy. Do you love Jane Packard?”
A look of surprise came into his face, followed by one of intense
thought. He was silent for a space.
“Who, me?” he said at length.
“Yes, you.”
“Jane Packard?”
“Yes, Jane Packard.”
“Do I love Jane Packard?” said William, assembling the material and
arranging it neatly in his mind.
He pondered for perhaps five minutes.
“Why, of course I do,” he said.
“Splendid!”
“Devotedly, dash it!”
“Capital.”
“You might say madly.”
I tapped him on his barrel-like chest.
“Then my advice to you, William Bates, is to tell her so.”
“Now that’s rather a brainy scheme,” said William, looking at me
admiringly. “I see exactly what you’re driving at. You mean it would
kind of settle things, and all that?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, I’ve got to go away for a couple of days to-morrow--it’s the
Invitation Tournament at Squashy Hollow--but I’ll be back on Wednesday.
Suppose I take her out on the links on Wednesday and propose?”
“A very good idea.”
“At the sixth hole, say?”
“At the sixth hole would do excellently.”
“Or the seventh?”
“The sixth would be better. The ground slopes from the tee, and you
would be hidden from view by the dog-leg turn.”
“Something in that.”
“My own suggestion would be that you somehow contrive to lead her into
that large bunker to the left of the sixth fairway.”
“Why?”
“I have reason to believe that Jane would respond more readily to
your wooing were it conducted in some vast sandy waste. And there is
another thing,” I proceeded, earnestly, “which I must impress upon you.
See that there is nothing tame or tepid about your behaviour when you
propose. You must show zip and romance. In fact, I strongly recommend
you, before you even say a word to her, to seize her and clasp her in
your arms and let your hot breath sear her face.”
“Who, me?” said William.
“Believe me, it is what will appeal to her most.”
“But, I say! Hot breath, I mean! Dash it all, you know, what?”
“I assure you it is indispensable.”
“Seize her?” said William blankly.
“Precisely.”
“Clasp her in my arms?”
“Just so.”
William plunged into silent thought once more.
“Well, you _know_, I suppose,” he said at length. “You’ve had
experience, I take it. Still--Oh, all right, I’ll have a stab at it.”
“There spoke the true William Bates!” I said. “Go to it, lad, and
Heaven speed your wooing!”
* * * * *
In all human schemes--and it is this that so often brings failure to
the subtlest strategists--there is always the chance of the Unknown
Factor popping up, that unforeseen X for which we have made no
allowance and which throws our whole plan of campaign out of gear.
I had not anticipated anything of the kind coming along to mar the
arrangements on the present occasion; but when I reached the first tee
on the Wednesday afternoon to give William Bates that last word of
encouragement, which means so much, I saw that I had been too sanguine.
William had not yet arrived, but Jane was there, and with her a tall,
slim, dark-haired, sickeningly romantic-looking youth in faultlessly
fitting serge. A stranger to me. He was talking to her in a musical
undertone, and she seemed to be hanging on his words. Her beautiful
eyes were fixed on his face, and her lips slightly parted. So absorbed
was she that it was not until I spoke that she became aware of my
presence.
“William not arrived yet?”
She turned with a start.
“William? Hasn’t he? Oh! No, not yet. I don’t suppose he will be long.
I want to introduce you to Mr. Spelvin. He has come to stay with the
Wyndhams for a few weeks. He is going to walk round with us.”
Naturally this information came as a shock to me, but I masked my
feelings and greeted the young man with a well-assumed cordiality.
“Mr. George Spelvin, the actor?” I asked, shaking hands.
“My cousin,” he said. “My name is Rodney Spelvin. I do not share
George’s histrionic ambitions. If I have any claim to--may I say
renown?--it is as a maker of harmonies.”
“A composer, eh?”
“Verbal harmonies,” explained Mr. Spelvin. “I am, in my humble fashion,
a poet.”
“He writes the most beautiful poetry,” said Jane, warmly. “He has just
been reciting some of it to me.”
“Oh, that little thing?” said Mr. Spelvin, deprecatingly. “A mere
_morceau_. One of my juvenilia.”
“It was too beautiful for words,” persisted Jane.
“Ah, you,” said Mr. Spelvin, “have the soul to appreciate it. I could
wish that there were more like you, Miss Packard. We singers have much
to put up with in a crass and materialistic world. Only last week
a man, a coarse editor, asked me what my sonnet, ‘Wine of Desire,’
_meant_.” He laughed indulgently. “I gave him answer, ’twas a sonnet,
not a mining prospectus.”
“It would have served him right,” said Jane, heatedly, “if you had
pasted him one on the nose!”
At this point a low whistle behind me attracted my attention, and I
turned to perceive William Bates towering against the sky-line.
“Hoy!” said William.
I walked to where he stood, leaving Jane and Mr. Spelvin in earnest
conversation with their heads close together.
“I say,” said William, in a rumbling undertone, “who’s the bird with
Jane?”
“A man named Spelvin. He is visiting the Wyndhams. I suppose Mrs.
Wyndham made them acquainted.”
“Looks a bit of a Gawd-help-us,” said William critically.
“He is going to walk round with you.”
It was impossible for a man of William Bates’s temperament to start,
but his face took on a look of faint concern.
“Walk round with us?”
“So Jane said.”
“But look here,” said William. “I can’t possibly seize her and clasp
her in my arms and do all that hot-breath stuff with this pie-faced
exhibit hanging round on the out-skirts.”
“No, I fear not.”
“Postpone it, then, what?” said William, with unmistakable relief.
“Well, as a matter of fact, it’s probably a good thing. There was a
most extraordinarily fine steak-and-kidney pudding at lunch, and,
between ourselves, I’m not feeling what you might call keyed up to
anything in the nature of a romantic scene. Some other time, eh?”
I looked at Jane and the Spelvin youth, and a nameless apprehension
swept over me. There was something in their attitude which I found
alarming. I was just about to whisper a warning to William not to
treat this new arrival too lightly, when Jane caught sight of him and
called him over and a moment later they set out on their round.
I walked away pensively. This Spelvin’s advent, coming immediately on
top of that book of desert love, was undeniably sinister. My heart sank
for William, and I waited at the club-house to have a word with him,
after his match. He came in two hours later, flushed and jubilant.
“Played the game of my life!” he said. “We didn’t hole out all the
putts, but, making allowance for everything, you can chalk me up an
eighty-three. Not so bad, eh? You know the eighth hole? Well, I was a
bit short with my drive, and found my ball lying badly for the brassie,
so I took my driving-iron and with a nice easy swing let the pill have
it so squarely on the seat of the pants that it flew--”
“Where is Jane?” I interrupted.
“Jane? Oh, the bloke Spelvin has taken her home.”
“Beware of him, William!” I whispered, tensely. “Have a care, young
Bates! If you don’t look out, you’ll have him stealing Jane from you.
Don’t laugh. Remember that I saw them together before you arrived. She
was gazing into his eyes as a desert maiden might gaze into the eyes
of a sheik. You don’t seem to realise, wretched William Bates, that
Jane is an extremely romantic girl. A fascinating stranger like this,
coming suddenly into her life, may well snatch her away from you before
you know where you are.”
“That’s all right,” said William, lightly. “I don’t mind admitting that
the same idea occurred to me. But I made judicious inquiries on the
way round, and found out that the fellow’s a poet. You don’t seriously
expect me to believe that there’s any chance of Jane falling in love
with a poet?”
He spoke incredulously, for there were three things in the world that
he held in the smallest esteem--slugs, poets, and caddies with hiccups.
“I think it extremely possible, if not probable,” I replied.
“Nonsense!” said William. “And, besides, the man doesn’t play golf.
Never had a club in his hand, and says he never wants to. That’s the
sort of fellow he is.”
At this, I confess, I did experience a distinct feeling of relief. I
could imagine Jane Packard, stimulated by exotic literature, committing
many follies, but I was compelled to own that I could not conceive of
her giving her heart to one who not only did not play golf but had no
desire to play it. Such a man, to a girl of her fine nature and correct
upbringing, would be beyond the pale. I walked home with William in a
calm and happy frame of mind.
I was to learn but one short week later that Woman is the
unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem we men can never hope
to solve.
* * * * *
The week that followed was one of much festivity in our village. There
were dances, picnics, bathing-parties, and all the other adjuncts of
high summer. In these William Bates played but a minor part. Dancing
was not one of his gifts. He swung, if called upon, an amiable shoe,
but the disposition in the neighbourhood was to refrain from calling
upon him; for he had an incurable habit of coming down with his full
weight upon his partner’s toes, and many a fair girl had had to lie up
for a couple of days after collaborating with him in a fox-trot.
Picnics, again, bored him, and he always preferred a round on the
links to the merriest bathing-party. The consequence was that he kept
practically aloof from the revels, and all through the week Jane
Packard was squired by Rodney Spelvin. With Spelvin she swayed over the
waxed floor; with Spelvin she dived and swam; and it was Spelvin who,
with zealous hand, brushed ants off her mayonnaise and squashed wasps
with a chivalrous teaspoon. The end was inevitable. Apart from anything
else, the moon was at its full and many of these picnics were held at
night. And you know what that means. It was about ten days later that
William Bates came to me in my little garden with an expression on his
face like a man who didn’t know it was loaded.
“I say,” said William, “you busy?”
I emptied the remainder of the water-can on the lobelias, and was at
his disposal.
“I say,” said William, “rather a rotten thing has happened. You know
Jane?”
I said I knew Jane.
“You know Spelvin?”
I said I knew Spelvin.
“Well, Jane’s gone and got engaged to him,” said William, aggrieved.
“What?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Already?”
“Absolutely. She told me this morning. And what I want to know,” said
the stricken boy, sitting down thoroughly unnerved on a basket of
strawberries, “is, where do I get off?”
My heart bled for him, but I could not help reminding him that I had
anticipated this.
“You should not have left them so much alone together,” I said. “You
must have known that there is nothing more conducive to love than the
moon in June. Why, songs have been written about it. In fact, I cannot
at the moment recall a song that has not been written about it.”
“Yes, but how was I to guess that anything like this would happen?”
cried William, rising and scraping strawberries off his person. “Who
would ever have supposed Jane Packard would leap off the dock with a
fellow who doesn’t play golf?”
“Certainly, as you say, it seems almost incredible. You are sure you
heard her correctly? When she told you about the engagement, I mean.
There was no chance that you could have misunderstood?”
“Not a bit of it. As a matter of fact, what led up to the thing, if you
know what I mean, was me proposing to her myself. I’d been thinking a
lot during the last ten days over what you said to me about that, and
the more I thought of it the more of a sound egg the notion seemed. So
I got her alone up at the club-house and said, ‘I say, old girl, what
about it?’ and she said, ‘What about what?’ and I said, ‘What about
marrying me? Don’t if you don’t want to, of course,’ I said, ‘but I’m
bound to say it looks pretty good to me.’ And then she said she loved
another--this bloke Spelvin, to wit. A nasty jar, I can tell you, it
was. I was just starting off on a round, and it made me hook my putts
on every green.”
“But did she say specifically that she was engaged to Spelvin?”
“She said she loved him.”
“There may be hope. If she is not irrevocably engaged the fancy may
pass. I think I will go and see Jane and make tactful inquiries.”
“I wish you would,” said William. “And, I say, you haven’t any stuff
that’ll take strawberry-juice off a fellow’s trousers, have you?”
* * * * *
My interview with Jane that evening served only to confirm the bad
news. Yes, she was definitely engaged to the man Spelvin. In a burst of
girlish confidence she told me some of the details of the affair.
“The moon was shining and a soft breeze played in the trees,” she said.
“And suddenly he took me in his arms, gazed deep into my eyes, and
cried, ‘I love you! I worship you! I adore you! You are the tree on
which the fruit of my life hangs; my mate; my woman; predestined to me
since the first star shone up in yonder sky!’”
“Nothing,” I agreed, “could be fairer than that. And then?” I said,
thinking how different it all must have been from William Bates’s
miserable, limping proposal.
“Then we fixed it up that we would get married in September.”
“You are sure you are doing wisely?” I ventured.
Her eyes opened.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, you know, whatever his other merits--and no doubt they are
numerous--Rodney Spelvin does _not_ play golf.”
“No, but he’s very broad-minded about it.”
I shuddered. Women say these things so lightly.
“Broad-minded?”
“Yes. He has no objection to my going on playing. He says he likes my
pretty enthusiasms.”
There seemed nothing more to say on that subject.
“Well,” I said, “I am sure I wish you every happiness. I had hoped, of
course--but never mind that.”
“What?”
“I had hoped, as you insist on my saying it, that you and William
Bates--”
A shadow passed over her face. Her eyes grew sad.
“Poor William! I’m awfully sorry about that. He’s a dear.”
“A splendid fellow,” I agreed.
“He has been so wonderful about the whole thing. So many men would have
gone off and shot grizzly bears or something. But William just said
‘Right-o!’ in a quiet voice, and he’s going to caddy for me at Mossy
Heath next week.”
“There is good stuff in the boy.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “If it wasn’t for Rodney--Oh, well!”
I thought it would be tactful to change the subject.
“So you have decided to go to Mossy Heath again?”
“Yes. And I’m really going to qualify this year.”
* * * * *
The annual Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath was one of the most
important fixtures of our local female golfing year. As is usual
with these affairs, it began with a medal-play qualifying round, the
thirty-two players with the lowest net scores then proceeding to fight
it out during the remainder of the week by match-play. It gratified
me to hear Jane speak so confidently of her chances, for this was the
fourth year she had entered, and each time, though she had started
out with the brightest prospects, she had failed to survive the
qualifying round. Like so many golfers, she was fifty per cent. better
at match-play than at medal-play. Mossy Heath, being a championship
course, is full of nasty pitfalls, and on each of the three occasions
on which she had tackled it one very bad hole had undone all her steady
work on the other seventeen and ruined her card. I was delighted to
find her so undismayed by failure.
“I am sure you will,” I said. “Just play your usual careful game.”
“It doesn’t matter what sort of a game I play this time,” said Jane,
jubilantly. “I’ve just heard that there are only thirty-two entries
this year, so that everybody who finishes is bound to qualify. I have
simply got to get round somehow, and there I am.”
“It would seem somewhat superfluous in these circumstances to play a
qualifying round at all.”
“Oh, but they must. You see, there are prizes for the best three
scores, so they have to play it. But isn’t it a relief to know that,
even if I come to grief on that beastly seventh, as I did last year, I
shall still be all right?”
“It is, indeed. I have a feeling that once it becomes a matter of
match-play you will be irresistible.”
“I do hope so. It would be lovely to win with Rodney looking on.”
“Will he be looking on?”
“Yes. He’s going to walk round with me. Isn’t it sweet of him?”
Her _fiancé’s_ name having slid into the conversation again, she seemed
inclined to become eloquent about him. I left her, however, before
she could begin. To one so strongly pro-William as myself, eulogistic
prattle about Rodney Spelvin was repugnant. I disapproved entirely
of this infatuation of hers. I am not a narrow-minded man; I quite
appreciate the fact that non-golfers are entitled to marry; but I
could not countenance their marrying potential winners of the Ladies’
Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath.
The Greens Committee, as greens committees are so apt to do in order
to justify their existence, have altered the Mossy Heath course
considerably since the time of which I am speaking, but they have
left the three most poisonous holes untouched. I refer to the fourth,
the seventh, and the fifteenth. Even a soulless Greens Committee seems
to have realised that golfers, long-suffering though they are, can be
pushed too far, and that the addition of even a single extra bunker to
any of these dreadful places would probably lead to armed riots in the
club-house.
Jane Packard had done well on the first three holes, but as she stood
on the fourth tee she was conscious, despite the fact that this seemed
to be one of her good days, of a certain nervousness; and oddly enough,
great as was her love for Rodney Spelvin, it was not his presence that
gave her courage, but the sight of William Bates’s large, friendly face
and the sound of his pleasant voice urging her to keep her bean down
and refrain from pressing.
As a matter of fact, to be perfectly truthful, there was beginning
already to germinate within her by this time a faint but definite
regret that Rodney Spelvin had decided to accompany her on this
qualifying round. It was sweet of him to bother to come, no doubt, but
still there was something about Rodney that did not seem to blend with
the holy atmosphere of a championship course. He was the one romance
of her life and their souls were bound together for all eternity, but
the fact remained that he did not appear to be able to keep still
while she was making her shots, and his light humming, musical though
it was, militated against accuracy on the green. He was humming now
as she addressed her ball, and for an instant a spasm of irritation
shot through her. She fought it down bravely and concentrated on her
drive, and when the ball soared over the cross-bunker she forgot her
annoyance. There is nothing so mellowing, so conducive to sweet and
genial thoughts, as a real juicy one straight down the middle, and this
was a pipterino.
“Nice work,” said William Bates, approvingly.
Jane gave him a grateful smile and turned to Rodney. It was his
appreciation that she wanted. He was not a golfer, but even he must be
able to see that her drive had been something out of the common.
Rodney Spelvin was standing with his back turned, gazing out over the
rolling prospect, one hand shading his eyes.
“That vista there,” said Rodney. “That calm, wooded hollow, bathed in
the golden sunshine. It reminds me of the island valley of Avilion--”
“Did you see my drive, Rodney?”
“--where falls not rain nor hail nor any snow, nor ever wind blows
loudly. Eh? Your drive? No, I didn’t.”
Again Jane Packard was aware of that faint, wistful regret. But
this was swept away a few moments later in the ecstasy of a perfect
iron-shot which plunked her ball nicely on to the green. The last
time she had played this hole she had taken seven, for all round the
plateau green are sinister sand-bunkers, each beckoning the ball
into its hideous depths; and now she was on in two and life was very
sweet. Putting was her strong point, so that there was no reason why
she should not get a snappy four on one of the nastiest holes on the
course. She glowed with a strange emotion as she took her putter, and
as she bent over her ball the air seemed filled with soft music.
It was only when she started to concentrate on the line of her putt
that this soft music began to bother her. Then, listening, she
became aware that it proceeded from Rodney Spelvin. He was standing
immediately behind her, humming an old French love-song. It was the
sort of old French love-song to which she could have listened for hours
in some scented garden under the young May moon, but on the green of
the fourth at Mossy Heath it got right in amongst her nerve-centres.
“Rodney, _please_!”
“Eh?”
Jane found herself wishing that Rodney Spelvin would not say “Eh?”
whenever she spoke to him.
“Do you mind not humming?” said Jane. “I want to putt.”
“Putt on, child, putt on,” said Rodney Spelvin, indulgently. “I don’t
know what you mean, but, if it makes you happy to putt, putt to your
heart’s content.”
Jane bent over her ball again. She had got the line now. She brought
back her putter with infinite care.
“My God!” exclaimed Rodney Spelvin, going off like a bomb.
Jane’s ball, sharply jabbed, shot past the hole and rolled on about
three yards. She spun round in anguish. Rodney Spelvin was pointing at
the horizon.
“_What_ a bit of colour!” he cried. “Did you ever see such a bit of
colour?”
“Oh, Rodney!” moaned Jane.
“Eh?”
Jane gulped and walked to her ball. Her fourth putt trickled into the
hole.
“Did you win?” said Rodney Spelvin, amiably.
Jane walked to the fifth tee in silence.
* * * * *
The fifth and sixth holes at Mossy Heath are long, but they offer
little trouble to those who are able to keep straight. It is as if the
architect of the course had relaxed over these two in order to ensure
that his malignant mind should be at its freshest and keenest when
he came to design the pestilential seventh. This seventh, as you may
remember, is the hole at which Sandy McHoots, then Open Champion, took
an eleven on an important occasion. It is a short hole, and a full
mashie will take you nicely on to the green, provided you can carry the
river that frolics just beyond the tee and seems to plead with you to
throw it a ball to play with. Once on the green, however, the problem
is to stay there. The green itself is about the size of a drawing-room
carpet, and in the summer, when the ground is hard, a ball that has not
the maximum of back-spin is apt to touch lightly and bound off into the
river beyond; for this is an island green, where the stream bends like
a serpent. I refresh your memory with these facts in order that you may
appreciate to the full what Jane Packard was up against.
The woman with whom Jane was partnered had the honour, and drove a
nice high ball which fell into one of the bunkers to the left. She
was a silent, patient-looking woman, and she seemed to regard this as
perfectly satisfactory. She withdrew from the tee and made way for Jane.
“Nice work!” said William Bates, a moment later. For Jane’s ball,
soaring in a perfect arc, was dropping, it seemed on the very pin.
“Oh, Rodney, look!” cried Jane.
“Eh?” said Rodney Spelvin.
His remark was drowned in a passionate squeal of agony from his
betrothed. The most poignant of all tragedies had occurred. The ball,
touching the green, leaped like a young lamb, scuttled past the pin,
and took a running dive over the cliff.
There was a silence. Jane’s partner, who was seated on the bench by the
sand-box reading a pocket edition in limp leather of Vardon’s _What
every Young Golfer Should Know_, with which she had been refreshing
herself at odd moments all through the round, had not observed the
incident. William Bates, with the tact of a true golfer, refrained from
comment. Jane was herself swallowing painfully. It was left to Rodney
Spelvin to break the silence.
“Good!” he said.
Jane Packard turned like a stepped-on worm.
“What do you mean, good?”
“You hit your ball farther than she did.”
“I sent it into the river,” said Jane, in a low, toneless voice.
“Capital!” said Rodney Spelvin, delicately masking a yawn with two
fingers of his shapely right hand. “Capital! Capital!”
Her face contorted with pain, Jane put down another ball.
“Playing three,” she said.
The student of Vardon marked the place in her book with her thumb,
looked up, nodded, and resumed her reading.
“Nice w--” began William Bates, as the ball soared off the tee, and
checked himself abruptly. Already he could see that the unfortunate
girl had put too little beef into it. The ball was falling, falling.
It fell. A crystal fountain flashed up towards the sun. The ball lay
floating on the bosom of the stream, only some few feet short of the
island. But, as has been well pointed out, that little less and how far
away!
“Playing five!” said Jane, between her teeth.
“What,” inquired Rodney Spelvin, chattily, lighting a cigarette, “is
the record break?”
“Playing _five_,” said Jane, with a dreadful calm, and gripped her
mashie.
“Half a second,” said William Bates, suddenly. “I say, I believe you
could play that last one from where it floats. A good crisp slosh with
a niblick would put you on, and you’d be there in four, with a chance
for a five. Worth trying, what? I mean, no sense in dropping strokes
unless you have to.”
Jane’s eyes were gleaming. She threw William a look of infinite
gratitude.
“Why, I believe I could!”
“Worth having a dash.”
“There’s a boat down there!”
“I could row,” said William.
“I could stand in the middle and slosh,” cried Jane.
“And what’s-his-name--_that_,” said William, jerking his head in the
direction of Rodney Spelvin, who was strolling up and down behind the
tee, humming a gay Venetian barcarolle, “could steer.”
“William,” said Jane, fervently, “you’re a darling.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said William, modestly.
“There’s no one like you in the world. Rodney!”
“Eh?” said Rodney Spelvin.
“We’re going out in that boat. I want you to steer.”
Rodney Spelvin’s face showed appreciation of the change of programme.
Golf bored him, but what could be nicer than a gentle row in a boat.
“Capital!” he said. “Capital! Capital!”
There was a dreamy look in Rodney Spelvin’s eyes as he leaned back with
the tiller-ropes in his hands. This was just his idea of the proper way
of passing a summer afternoon. Drifting lazily over the silver surface
of the stream. His eyes closed. He began to murmur softly:
“All to-day the slow sleek ripples hardly bear up shoreward, Charged
with sighs more light than laughter, faint and fair, Like a woodland
lake’s weak wavelets lightly lingering forward, Soft and listless as
the--Here! Hi!”
For at this moment the silver surface of the stream was violently
split by a vigorously-wielded niblick, the boat lurched drunkenly, and
over his Panama-hatted head and down his grey-flannelled torso there
descended a cascade of water.
“Here! Hi!” cried Rodney Spelvin.
He cleared his eyes and gazed reproachfully. Jane and William Bates
were peering into the depths.
“I missed it,” said Jane.
“There she spouts!” said William, pointing. “Ready?”
Jane raised her niblick.
“Here! Hi!” bleated Rodney Spelvin, as a second cascade poured damply
over him.
He shook the drops off his face, and perceived that Jane was regarding
him with hostility.
“I do wish you wouldn’t talk just as I am swinging,” she said,
pettishly. “Now you’ve made me miss it again! If you can’t keep quiet,
I wish you wouldn’t insist on coming round with one. Can you see it,
William?”
“There she blows,” said William Bates.
“Here! You aren’t going to do it _again_, are you?” cried Rodney
Spelvin.
Jane bared her teeth.
“I’m going to get that ball on to the green if I have to stay here all
night,” she said.
Rodney Spelvin looked at her and shuddered. Was this the quiet, dreamy
girl he had loved? This Mænad? Her hair was lying in damp wisps about
her face, her eyes were shining with an unearthly light.
“No, but really--” he faltered.
Jane stamped her foot.
“What _are_ you making all this fuss about, Rodney?” she snapped.
“Where is it, William?”
“There she dips,” said William. “Playing six.”
“Playing six.”
“Let her go,” said William.
“Let her go it is!” said Jane.
A perfect understanding seemed to prevail between these two.
_Splash!_
The woman on the bank looked up from her Vardon as Rodney Spelvin’s
agonised scream rent the air. She saw a boat upon the water, a man
rowing the boat, another man, hatless, gesticulating in the stern,
a girl beating the water with a niblick. She nodded placidly and
understandingly. A niblick was the club she would have used herself in
such circumstances. Everything appeared to her entirely regular and
orthodox. She resumed her book.
_Splash!_
“Playing fifteen,” said Jane.
“Fifteen is right,” said William Bates.
_Splash! Splash! Splash!_
“Playing forty-four.”
“Forty-four is correct.”
_Splash! Splash! Splash! Splash!_
“Eighty-three?” said Jane, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“No. Only eighty-two,” said William Bates.
“Where is it?”
“There she drifts.”
A dripping figure rose violently in the stern of the boat, spouting
water like a public fountain. For what seemed to him like an eternity
Rodney Spelvin had ducked and spluttered and writhed, and now it came
to him abruptly that he was through. He bounded from his seat, and at
the same time Jane swung with all the force of her supple body. There
was a splash beside which all the other splashes had been as nothing.
The boat overturned and went drifting away. Three bodies plunged into
the stream. Three heads emerged from the water.
The woman on the bank looked absently in their direction. Then she
resumed her book.
“It’s all right,” said William Bates, contentedly. “We’re in our depth.”
“My bag!” cried Jane. “My bag of clubs!”
“Must have sunk,” said William.
“Rodney,” said Jane, “my bag of clubs is at the bottom somewhere. Dive
under and swim about and try to find it.”
“It’s bound to be around somewhere,” said William Bates encouragingly.
Rodney Spelvin drew himself up to his full height. It was not an easy
thing to do, for it was muddy where he stood, but he did it.
“Damn your bag of clubs!” he bellowed, lost to all shame. “I’m going
home!”
With painful steps, tripping from time to time and vanishing beneath
the surface, he sloshed to the shore. For a moment he paused on the
bank, silhouetted against the summer sky, then he was gone.
* * * * *
Jane Packard and William Bates watched him go with amazed eyes.
“I never would have dreamed,” said Jane, dazedly, “that he was that
sort of man.”
“A bad lot,” said William Bates.
“The sort of man to be upset by the merest trifle!”
“Must have a naturally bad disposition,” said William Bates.
“Why, if a little thing like this could make him so rude and brutal and
horrid, it wouldn’t be _safe_ to marry him!”
“Taking a big chance,” agreed William Bates. “Sort of fellow who would
water the cat’s milk and kick the baby in the face.” He took a deep
breath and disappeared. “Here are your clubs, old girl,” he said,
coming to the surface again. “Only wanted a bit of looking for.”
“Oh, William,” said Jane, “you are the most wonderful man on earth!”
“Would you go as far as that?” said William.
“I was mad, mad, ever to get engaged to that brute!”
“Now there,” said William Bates, removing an eel from his left
breast-pocket, “I’m absolutely with you. Thought so all along, but
didn’t like to say so. What I mean is, a girl like you--keen on golf
and all that sort of thing--ought to marry a chap like me--keen on golf
and everything of that description.”
“William,” cried Jane, passionately, detaching a newt from her right
ear, “I will!”
“Silly nonsense, when you come right down to it, your marrying a fellow
who doesn’t play golf. Nothing in it.”
“I’ll break off the engagement the moment I get home.”
“You couldn’t make a sounder move, old girl.”
“William!”
“Jane!”
The woman on the bank, glancing up as she turned a page, saw a man
and a girl embracing, up to their waists in water. It seemed to have
nothing to do with her. She resumed her book.
Jane looked lovingly into William’s eyes.
“William,” she said, “I think I have loved you all my life.”
“Jane,” said William, “I’m dashed sure I’ve loved _you_ all _my_ life.
Meant to tell you so a dozen times, but something always seemed to come
up.”
“William,” said Jane, “you’re an angel and a darling. Where’s the ball?”
“There she pops.”
“Playing eighty-four?”
“Eighty-four it is,” said William. “Slow back, keep your eye on the
ball, and don’t press.”
The woman on the bank began Chapter Twenty-five.
CHAPTER VIII
JANE GETS OFF THE FAIRWAY
The side-door leading into the smoking-room opened, and the golf-club’s
popular and energetic secretary came trotting down the steps on to the
terrace above the ninth green. As he reached the gravel, a wandering
puff of wind blew the door to with a sharp report, and the Oldest
Member, who had been dozing in a chair over his _Wodehouse on the
Niblick_, unclosed his eyes, blinking in the strong light. He perceived
the secretary skimming to and fro like a questing dog.
“You have lost something?” he inquired, courteously.
“Yes, a book. I wish,” said the secretary, annoyed, “that people would
leave things alone. You haven’t seen a novel called _The Man with the
Missing Eyeball_ anywhere about, have you? I’ll swear I left it on one
of these seats when I went in to lunch.”
“You are better without it,” said the Sage, with a touch of austerity.
“I do not approve of these trashy works of fiction. How much more
profitably would your time be spent in mastering the contents of such a
volume as I hold in my hand. This is the real literature.”
The secretary drew nearer, peering discontentedly about him; and as he
approached the Oldest Member sniffed inquiringly.
“What,” he said, “is that odour of--? Ah, I see that you are wearing
them in your buttonhole. White violets,” he murmured. “White violets.
Dear me!”
The secretary smirked.
“A girl gave them to me,” he said, coyly. “Nice, aren’t they?” He
squinted down complacently at the flowers, thus missing a sudden
sinister gleam in the Oldest Member’s eye--a gleam which, had he been
on his guard, would have sent him scudding over the horizon; for it was
the gleam which told that the Sage had been reminded of a story.
“White violets,” said the Oldest Member, in a meditative voice. “A
curious coincidence that you should be wearing white violets and
looking for a work of fiction. The combination brings irresistibly to
my mind--”
Realising his peril too late, the secretary started violently. A gentle
hand urged him into the adjoining chair.
“--the story,” proceeded the Oldest Member, “of William Bates, Jane
Packard, and Rodney Spelvin.”
The secretary drew a deep breath of relief and the careworn look left
his face.
“It’s all right,” he said, briskly. “You told me that one only the
other day. I remember every word of it. Jane Packard got engaged to
Rodney Spelvin, the poet, but her better feelings prevailed in time,
and she broke it off and married Bates, who was a golfer. I recall the
whole thing distinctly. This man Bates was an unromantic sort of chap,
but he loved Jane Packard devotedly. Bless my soul, how it all comes
back to me! No need to tell it me at all!”
“What I am about to relate now,” said the sage, tightening his grip on
the other’s coat-sleeve, “is another story about William Bates, Jane
Packard, and Rodney Spelvin.”
* * * * *
Inasmuch (said the Oldest Member) as you have not forgotten the events
leading up to the marriage of William Bates and Jane Packard, I will
not repeat them. All I need say is that that curious spasm of romantic
sentiment which had caused Jane to fall temporarily under the spell of
a man who was not only a poet but actually a non-golfer, appeared to
have passed completely away, leaving no trace behind. From the day she
broke off her engagement to Spelvin and plighted her troth to young
Bates, nothing could have been more eminently sane and satisfactory
than her behaviour.
She seemed entirely her old self once more. Two hours after William had
led her down the aisle, she and he were out on the links, playing off
the final of the Mixed Foursomes which--and we all thought it the best
of omens for their married happiness--they won hands down. A deputation
of all that was best and fairest in the village then escorted them to
the station to see them off on their honeymoon, which was to be spent
in a series of visits to well-known courses throughout the country.
Before the train left, I took young William aside for a moment. I had
known both him and Jane since childhood, and the success of their union
was very near my heart.
“William,” I said, “a word with you.”
“Make it snappy,” said William.
“You have learned by this time,” I said, “that there is a strong
romantic streak in Jane. It may not appear on the surface, but it is
there. And this romantic streak will cause her, like so many wives,
to attach an exaggerated importance to what may seem to you trivial
things. She will expect from her husband not only love and a constant
tender solicitude--”
“Speed it up,” urged William.
“What I am trying to say is that, after the habit of wives, she will
expect you to remember each year the anniversary of your wedding day,
and will be madder than a wet hen if you forget it.”
“That’s all right. I thought of that myself.”
“It is not all right,” I insisted. “Unless you take the most earnest
precautions, you are absolutely certain to forget. A year from now you
will come down to breakfast and Jane will say to you, ‘Do you know
what day it is to-day?’ and you will answer ‘Tuesday’ and reach for the
ham and eggs, thus inflicting on her gentle heart a wound from which it
will not readily recover.”
“Nothing like it,” said William, with extraordinary confidence. “I’ve
got a system calculated to beat the game every time. You know how fond
Jane is of white violets?”
“Is she?”
“She loves ’em. The bloke Spelvin used to give her a bunch every day.
That’s how I got the idea. Nothing like learning the shots from your
opponent. I’ve arranged with a florist that a bunch of white violets
is to be shipped to Jane every year on this day. I paid five years in
advance. I am therefore, speaking in the most conservative spirit, on
velvet. Even if I forget the day, the violets will be there to remind
me. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and I don’t see how it can
fail. Tell me frankly, is the scheme a wam or is it not?”
“A most excellent plan,” I said, relieved. And the next moment the
train came in. I left the station with my mind at rest. It seemed to me
that the only possible obstacle to the complete felicity of the young
couple had been removed.
* * * * *
Jane and William returned in due season from their honeymoon, and
settled down to the normal life of a healthy young couple. Each
day they did their round in the morning and their two rounds in the
afternoon, and after dinner they would sit hand in hand in the peaceful
dusk, reminding one another of the best shots they had brought off
at the various holes. Jane would describe to William how she got out
of the bunker on the fifth, and William would describe to Jane the
low raking wind-cheater he did on the seventh, and then for a moment
they would fall into that blissful silence which only true lovers
know, until William, illustrating his remarks with a walking-stick,
would show Jane how he did that pin-splitter with the mashie on the
sixteenth. An ideally happy union, one would have said.
But all the while a little cloud was gathering. As the anniversary of
their wedding day approached, a fear began to creep into Jane’s heart
that William was going to forget it. The perfect husband does not wait
till the dawning of the actual day to introduce the anniversary _motif_
into his conversation. As long as a week in advance he is apt to say,
dreamily, “About this time a year ago I was getting the old silk hat
polished up for the wedding,” or “Just about now, a year ago, they sent
home the sponge-bag trousers, as worn, and I tried them on in front of
the looking-glass.” But William said none of these things. Not even on
the night before the all-important date did he make any allusion to
it, and it was with a dull feeling of foreboding that Jane came down to
breakfast next morning.
She was first at the table, and was pouring out the coffee when William
entered. He opened the morning paper and started to peruse its contents
in silence. Not a yip did he let out of him to the effect that this was
the maddest, merriest day of all the glad new year.
“William,” said Jane.
“Hullo?”
“William,” said Jane, and her voice trembled a little, “what day is it
to-day?”
William looked at her over the paper surprised.
“Wednesday, old girl,” he replied. “Don’t you remember that yesterday
was Tuesday? Shocking memory you’ve got.”
He then reached out for the sausages and bacon and resumed his reading.
“Jane,” he said, suddenly. “Jane, old girl, there’s something I want to
tell you.”
“Yes?” said Jane, her heart beginning to flutter.
“Something important.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about these sausages. They are the very best,” said William,
earnestly, “that I have ever bitten. Where did you get them?”
“From Brownlow.”
“Stick to him,” said William.
Jane rose from the table and wandered out into the garden. The sun
shone gaily, but for her the day was bleak and cold. That William
loved her she did not doubt. But that streak of romance in her
demanded something more than mere placid love. And when she realised
that the poor mutt with whom she had linked her lot had forgotten
the anniversary of their wedding-day first crack out of the box, her
woman’s heart was so wounded that for two pins she could have beaned
him with a brick.
It was while she was still brooding in this hostile fashion that she
perceived the postman coming up the garden. She went to meet him, and
was handed a couple of circulars and a mysterious parcel. She broke the
string, and behold! a cardboard box containing white violets.
Jane was surprised. Who could be sending her white violets? No message
accompanied them. There was no clue whatever to their origin. Even the
name of the florist had been omitted.
“Now, who--?” mused Jane, and suddenly started as if she had received
a blow. Rodney Spelvin! Yes, it must be he. How many a bunch of white
violets had he given her in the brief course of their engagement! This
was his poetic way of showing her that he had not forgotten. All was
over between them, she had handed him his hat and given him the air,
but he still remembered.
Jane was a good and dutiful wife. She loved her William, and no
others need apply. Nevertheless, she was a woman. She looked about her
cautiously. There was nobody in sight. She streaked up to her room and
put the violets in water. And that night, before she went to bed, she
gazed at them for several minutes with eyes that were a little moist.
Poor Rodney! He could be nothing to her now, of course, but a dear lost
friend; but he had been a good old scout in his day.
* * * * *
It is not my purpose to weary you with repetitious detail in this
narrative. I will, therefore, merely state that the next year and
the next year and the year after that precisely the same thing took
place in the Bates’s home. Punctually every September the seventh
William placidly forgot, and punctually every September the seventh
the sender of the violets remembered. It was about a month after the
fifth anniversary, when William had got his handicap down to nine and
little Braid Vardon Bates, their only child, had celebrated his fourth
birthday, that Rodney Spelvin, who had hitherto confined himself to
poetry, broke out in a new place and inflicted upon the citizenry a
novel entitled _The Purple Fan_.
I saw the announcement of the publication in the papers; but beyond
a passing resolve that nothing would induce me to read the thing I
thought no more of the matter. It is always thus with life’s really
significant happenings. Fate sneaks its deadliest wallops in on us
with such seeming nonchalance. How could I guess what that book was to
do to the married happiness of Jane and William Bates?
In deciding not to read _The Purple Fan_ I had, I was to discover,
over-estimated my powers of resistance. Rodney Spelvin’s novel turned
out to be one of those things which it is impossible not to read.
Within a week of its appearance it had begun to go through the country
like Spanish influenza; and, much as I desired to avoid it, a perusal
was forced on me by sheer weight of mass-thinking. Every paper that
I picked up contained reviews of the book, references to it, letters
from the clergy denouncing it; and when I read that three hundred and
sixteen mothers had signed a petition to the authorities to have it
suppressed, I was reluctantly compelled to spring the necessary cash
and purchase a copy.
I had not expected to enjoy it, and I did not. Written in the
neodecadent style, which is so popular nowadays, its preciosity
offended me; and I particularly objected to its heroine, a young woman
of a type which, if met in real life, only ingrained chivalry could
have prevented a normal man from kicking extremely hard. Having skimmed
through it, I gave my copy to the man who came to inspect the drains.
If I had any feeling about the thing, it was a reflection that, if
Rodney Spelvin had had to get a novel out of his system, this was just
the sort of novel he was bound to write. I remember experiencing a
thankfulness that he had gone so entirely out of Jane’s life. How
little I knew!
* * * * *
Jane, like every other woman in the village, had bought her copy of
_The Purple Fan_. She read it surreptitiously, keeping it concealed,
when not in use, beneath a cushion on the Chesterfield. It was not its
general tone that caused her to do this, but rather the subconscious
feeling that she, a good wife, ought not to be deriving quite so much
enjoyment from the work of a man who had occupied for a time such a
romantic place in her life.
For Jane, unlike myself, adored the book. Eulalie French, its heroine,
whose appeal I had so missed, seemed to her the most fascinating
creature she had ever encountered.
She had read the thing through six times when, going up to town one day
to do some shopping, she ran into Rodney Spelvin. They found themselves
standing side by side on the pavement, waiting for the traffic to pass.
“Rodney!” gasped Jane.
It was a difficult moment for Rodney Spelvin. Five years had passed
since he had last seen Jane, and in those five years so many delightful
creatures had made a fuss of him that the memory of the girl to whom
he had once been engaged for a few weeks had become a little blurred.
In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had forgotten Jane
altogether. The fact that she had addressed him by his first name
seemed to argue that they must have met at some time somewhere; but,
though he strained his brain, absolutely nothing stirred.
The situation was one that might have embarrassed another man, but
Rodney Spelvin was a quick thinker. He saw at a glance that Jane was an
extremely pretty girl, and it was his guiding rule in life never to let
anything like that get past him. So he clasped her hand warmly, allowed
an expression of amazed delight to sweep over his face, and gazed
tensely into her eyes.
“You!” he murmured, playing it safe. “You, little one!”
Jane stood five feet seven in her stockings and had a fore-arm like the
village blacksmith’s, but she liked being called “little one.”
“How strange that we should meet like this!” she said, blushing
brightly.
“After all these years,” said Rodney Spelvin, taking a chance. It would
be a nuisance if it turned out that they had met at a studio-party
the day before yesterday, but something seemed to tell him that she
dated back a goodish way. Besides, even if they had met the day before
yesterday, he could get out of it by saying that the hours had seemed
like years. For you cannot stymie these modern poets. The boys are
there.
“More than five,” murmured Jane.
“Now where the deuce was I five years ago?” Rodney Spelvin asked
himself.
Jane looked down at the pavement and shuffled her left shoe nervously.
“I got the violets, Rodney,” she said.
Rodney Spelvin was considerably fogged, but he came back strongly.
“That’s good!” he said. “You got the violets? That’s capital. I was
wondering if you would get the violets.”
“It was like you to send them.”
Rodney blinked, but recovered himself immediately. He waved his hand
with a careless gesture, indicative of restrained nobility.
“Oh, as to that--!”
“Especially as I’m afraid I treated you rather badly. But it really was
for the happiness of both of us that I broke off the engagement. You do
understand that, don’t you?”
A light broke upon Rodney Spelvin. He had been confident that it would
if he only stalled along for a while. Now he placed this girl. She was
Jane something, the girl he had been engaged to. By Jove, yes. He knew
where he was now.
“Do not let us speak of it,” he said, registering pain. It was quite
easy for him to do this. All there was to it was tightening the lips
and drawing up the left eyebrow. He had practised it in front of his
mirror, for a fellow never knew when it might not come in useful.
“So you didn’t forget me, Rodney?”
“Forget you!”
There was a short pause.
“I read your novel,” said Jane. “I loved it.”
She blushed again, and the colour in her cheeks made her look so
remarkably pretty that Rodney began to feel some of the emotions which
had stirred him five years ago. He decided that this was a good thing
and wanted pushing along.
“I hoped that you might,” he said in a low voice, massaging her
hand. He broke off and directed into her eyes a look of such squashy
sentimentality that Jane reeled where she stood. “I wrote it for you,”
he added, simply.
Jane gasped.
“For me?”
“I supposed you would have guessed,” said Rodney. “Surely you saw the
dedication?”
_The Purple Fan_ had been dedicated, after Rodney Spelvin’s eminently
prudent fashion, to “One Who Will Understand.” He had frequently been
grateful for the happy inspiration.
“The dedication?”
“‘To One Who Will Understand,’” said Rodney, softly. “Who would that be
but you?”
“Oh, Rodney!”
“And didn’t you recognise Eulalie, Jane? Surely you cannot have failed
to recognise Eulalie?”
“Recognise her?”
“I drew her from you,” said Rodney Spelvin.
* * * * *
Jane’s mind was in a whirl as she went home in the train. To have met
Rodney Spelvin again was enough in itself to stimulate into activity
that hidden pulse of romance in her. To discover that she had been in
his thoughts so continuously all these years and that she still held
such sway over his faithful heart that he had drawn the heroine of his
novel from her was simply devastating. Mechanically she got out at the
right station and mechanically made her way to the cottage. She was
relieved to find that William was still out on the links. She loved
William devotedly, of course, but just at the moment he would have
been in the way; for she wanted a quiet hour with _The Purple Fan_. It
was necessary for her to re-read in the light of this new knowledge
the more important of the scenes in which Eulalie French figured. She
knew them practically by heart already, but nevertheless she wished
to read them again. When William returned, warm and jubilant, she was
so absorbed that she only just had time to slide the book under the
sofa-cushion before the door opened.
Some guardian angel ought to have warned William Bates that he was
selecting a bad moment for his re-entry into the home, or at least to
have hinted that a preliminary wash and brush-up would be no bad thing.
There had been rain in the night, causing the links to become a trifle
soggy in spots, and William was one of those energetic golfers who do
not spare themselves. The result was that his pleasant features were
a good deal obscured by mud. An explosion-shot out of the bunker on
the fourteenth had filled his hair with damp sand, and his shoes were
a disgrace to any refined home. No, take him for all in all, William
did not look his best. He was fine if the sort of man you admired
was the brawny athlete straight from the dust of the arena; but on a
woman who was picturing herself the heroine of _The Purple Fan_ he
was bound to jar. Most of the scenes in which Eulalie French played
anything like a fat part took place either on moonlight terraces or in
beautifully furnished studios beneath the light of Oriental lamps with
pink silk shades, and all the men who came in contact with her--except
her husband, a clodhopping brute who spent most of his time in
riding-kit--were perfectly dressed and had dark, clean-cut, sensitive
faces.
William, accordingly, induced in Jane something closely approximating
to the heeby-jeebies.
“Hullo, old girl!” said William, affectionately. “You back? What have
you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, shopping,” said Jane, listlessly.
“See any one you knew?”
For a moment Jane hesitated.
“Yes,” she said. “I met Rodney Spelvin.”
Jealousy and suspicion had been left entirely out of William Bates’s
make-up. He did not start and frown; he did not clutch the arm of his
chair; he merely threw back his head and laughed like a hyæna. And that
laugh wounded Jane more than the most violent exhibition of mistrust
could have done.
“Good Lord!” gurgled William, jovially. “You don’t mean to say that
bird is still going around loose? I should have thought he would have
been lynched years ago. Looks like negligence somewhere.”
There comes a moment in married life when every wife gazes squarely at
her husband and the scales seem to fall from her eyes and she sees him
as he is--one of Nature’s Class A fatheads. Fortunately for married
men, these times of clear vision do not last long, or there would be
few homes left unbroken. It was so that Jane gazed at William now, but
unhappily her conviction that he was an out-size in rough-neck chumps
did not pass. Indeed, all through that evening it deepened. That night
she went to bed feeling for the first time that, when the clergyman had
said, “Wilt thou, Jane?” and she had replied in the affirmative, a
mean trick had been played on an inexperienced girl.
* * * * *
And so began that black period in the married life of Jane and William
Bates, the mere recollection of which in after years was sufficient to
put them right off their short game and even to affect their driving
from the tee. To William, having no clue to the cause of the mysterious
change in his wife, her behaviour was inexplicable. Had not her perfect
robustness made such a theory absurd, he would have supposed that she
was sickening for something. She golfed now intermittently, and often
with positive reluctance. She was frequently listless and distrait. And
there were other things about her of which he disapproved.
“I say, old girl,” he said one evening, “I know you won’t mind my
mentioning it, and I don’t suppose you’re aware of it yourself, but
recently you’ve developed a sort of silvery laugh. A nasty thing to
have about the home. Try to switch it off, old bird, would you mind?”
Jane said nothing. The man was not worth answering. All through the
pages of _The Purple Fan_, Eulalie French’s silvery laugh had been
highly spoken of and greatly appreciated by one and all. It was the
thing about her that the dark, clean-cut, sensitive-faced men most
admired. And the view Jane took of the matter was that if William did
not like it the poor fish could do the other thing.
But this brutal attack decided her to come out into the open with the
grievance which had been vexing her soul for weeks past.
“William,” she said, “I want to say something. William, I am feeling
stifled.”
“I’ll open the window.”
“Stifled in this beastly little village, I mean,” said Jane,
impatiently. “Nobody ever does anything here except play golf and
bridge, and you never meet an artist-soul from one year’s end to the
other. How can I express myself? How can I be myself? How can I fulfil
myself?”
“Do you want to?” asked William, somewhat out of his depth.
“Of course I want to. And I shan’t be happy unless we leave this
ghastly place and go to live in a studio in town.”
William sucked thoughtfully at his pipe. It was a tense moment for a
man who hated metropolitan life as much as he did. Nevertheless, if the
solution of Jane’s recent weirdness was simply that she had got tired
of the country and wanted to live in town, to the town they must go.
After a first involuntary recoil, he nerved himself to the martyrdom
like the fine fellow he was.
“We’ll pop off as soon as I can sell the house,” he said.
“I can’t wait as long as that. I want to go now.”
“All right,” said William, amiably. “We’ll go next week.”
* * * * *
William’s forebodings were quickly fulfilled. Before he had been in
the Metropolis ten days he had realised that he was up against it as
he had never been up against it before. He and Jane and little Braid
Vardon had established themselves in what the house-agent described
as an attractive bijou studio-apartment in the heart of the artistic
quarter. There was a nice bedroom for Jane, a delightful cupboard for
Braid Vardon, and a cosy corner behind a Japanese screen for William.
Most compact. The rest of the place consisted of a room with a large
skylight, handsomely furnished with cushions and samovars, where Jane
gave parties to the intelligentsia.
It was these parties that afflicted William as much as anything else.
He had not realised that Jane intended to run a _salon_. His idea of
a pleasant social evening was to have a couple of old friends in for
a rubber of bridge, and the almost nightly incursion of a horde of
extraordinary birds in floppy ties stunned him. He was unequal to the
situation from the first. While Jane sat enthroned on her cushion,
exchanging gay badinage with rising young poets and laughing that
silvery laugh of hers, William would have to stand squashed in a
corner, trying to hold off some bobbed-haired female who wanted his
opinion of Augustus John.
The strain was frightful, and, apart from the sheer discomfort of it,
he found to his consternation that it was beginning to affect his
golf. Whenever he struggled out from the artistic zone now to one of
the suburban courses, his jangled nerves unfitted him for decent play.
Bit by bit his game left him. First he found that he could not express
himself with the putter. Then he began to fail to be himself with the
mashie-niblick. And when at length he discovered that he was only
fulfilling himself about every fifth shot off the tee he felt that this
thing must stop.
* * * * *
The conscientious historian will always distinguish carefully between
the events leading up to a war and the actual occurrence resulting in
the outbreak of hostilities. The latter may be, and generally is, some
almost trivial matter, whose only importance is that it fulfils the
function of the last straw. In the case of Jane and William what caused
the definite rift was Jane’s refusal to tie a can to Rodney Spelvin.
The author of _The Purple Fan_ had been from the first a leading figure
in Jane’s _salon_. Most of those who attended these functions were
friends of his, introduced by him, and he had assumed almost from the
beginning the demeanour of a master of the revel. William, squashed
into his corner, had long gazed at the man with sullen dislike,
yearning to gather him up by the slack of his trousers and heave him
into outer darkness; but it is improbable that he would have overcome
his native amiability sufficiently to make any active move, had it not
been for the black mood caused by his rotten golf. But one evening,
when, coming home after doing the Mossy Heath course in five strokes
over the hundred, he found the studio congested with Rodney Spelvin and
his friends, many of them playing ukeleles, he decided that flesh and
blood could bear the strain no longer.
As soon as the last guest had gone he delivered his ultimatum.
“Listen, Jane,” he said. “Touching on this Spelvin bloke.”
“Well?” said Jane, coldly. She scented battle from afar.
“He gives me a pain in the neck.”
“Really?” said Jane, and laughed a silvery laugh.
“Don’t do it, old girl,” pleaded William, wincing.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘old girl’.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t like it.”
“You used to like it.”
“Well, I don’t now.”
“Oh!” said William, and ruminated awhile. “Well, be that as it may,”
he went on, “I want to tell you just one thing. Either you throw the
bloke Spelvin out on his left ear and send for the police if he tries
to get in again, or I push off. I mean it! I absolutely push off.”
There was a tense silence.
“Indeed?” said Jane at last.
“Positively push off,” repeated William, firmly. “I can stand a lot,
but pie-faced Spelvin tries human endurance too high.”
“He is not pie-faced,” said Jane, warmly.
“He _is_ pie-faced,” insisted William. “Come round to the Vienna
Bon-Ton Bakery to-morrow and I will show you an individual custard-pie
that might be his brother.”
“Well, I am certainly not going to be bullied into giving up an old
friend just because--”
William stared.
“You mean you won’t hand him the mitten?”
“I will not.”
“Think what you are saying, Jane. You positively decline to give this
false-alarm the quick exit?”
“I do.”
“Then,” said William, “all is over. I pop off.”
Jane stalked without a word into her bedroom. With a mist before his
eyes William began to pack. After a few moments he tapped at her door.
“Jane.”
“Well?”
“I’m packing.”
“Indeed?”
“But I can’t find my spare mashie.”
“I don’t care.”
William returned to his packing. When it was finished, he stole to her
door again. Already a faint stab of remorse was becoming blended with
his just indignation.
“Jane.”
“Well?”
“I’ve packed.”
“Really?”
“And now I’m popping.”
There was silence behind the door.
“I’m popping, Jane,” said William. And in his voice, though he tried to
make it cold and crisp, there was a note of wistfulness.
Through the door there came a sound. It was the sound of a silvery
laugh. And as he heard it William’s face hardened. Without another word
he picked up his suit-case and golf-bag, and with set jaw strode out
into the night.
* * * * *
One of the things that tend to keep the home together in these days
of modern unrest is the fact that exalted moods of indignation do
not last. William, released from the uncongenial atmosphere of the
studio, proceeded at once to plunge into an orgy of golf that for a
while precluded regret. Each day he indulged his starved soul with
fifty-four holes, and each night he sat smoking in bed, pleasantly
fatigued, reviewing the events of the past twelve hours with complete
satisfaction. It seemed to him that he had done the good and sensible
thing.
And then, slowly at first, but day by day more rapidly, his mood began
to change. That delightful feeling of jolly freedom ebbed away.
It was on the morning of the tenth day that he first became definitely
aware that all was not well. He had strolled out on the links after
breakfast with a brassie and a dozen balls for a bit of practice, and,
putting every ounce of weight and muscle into the stroke, brought off a
snifter with his very first shot. Straight and true the ball sped for
the distant green, and William, forgetting everything in the ecstasy of
the moment, uttered a gladsome cry.
“How about that one, old girl?” he exclaimed.
And then, with a sudden sinking of the heart, he realised that he was
alone.
An acute spasm of regret shot through William’s massive bosom. In that
instant of clear thinking he understood that golf is not all. What
shall it profit a man that he do the long hole in four, if there is no
loving wife at his elbow to squeak congratulations? A dull sensation of
forlorn emptiness afflicted William Bates. It passed, but it had been.
And he knew it would come again.
It did. It came that same afternoon. It came next morning. Gradually
it settled like a cloud on his happiness. He did his best to fight it
down. He increased his day’s output to sixty-three holes, but found no
relief. When he reflected that he had had the stupendous luck to be
married to a girl like Jane and had chucked the thing up, he could have
kicked himself round the house. He was in exactly the position of the
hero of the movie when the subtitle is flashed on the screen: “Came a
Day When Remorse Bit Like an Adder Into Roland Spenlow’s Soul.” Of all
the chumps who had ever tripped over themselves and lost a good thing,
from Adam downwards, he, he told himself, was the woollen-headedest.
On the fifteenth morning it began to rain.
* * * * *
Now, William Bates was not one of your fair-weather golfers. It took
more than a shower to discourage him. But this was real rain, with
which not even the stoutest enthusiast could cope. It poured down all
day in a solid sheet and set the seal on his melancholy. He pottered
about the house, sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of despond,
and was trying to derive a little faint distraction from practising
putts into a tooth-glass when the afternoon post arrived.
There was only one letter. He opened it listlessly. It was from Jukes,
Enderby, and Miller, florists, and what the firm wished to ascertain
was whether, his deposit on white violets to be despatched annually
to Mrs. William Bates being now exhausted, he desired to renew his
esteemed order. If so, on receipt of the money they would spring to the
task of sending same.
William stared at the letter dully. His first impression was that
Jukes, Enderby, and Miller were talking through their collective hats.
White violets? What was all this drivel about white violets? Jukes was
an ass. He knew nothing about white violets. Enderby was a fool. What
had he got to do with white violets? Miller was a pin-head. He had
never deposited any money to have white violets despatched.
William gasped. Yes, by George, he had, though, he remembered with a
sudden start. So he had, by golly! Good gosh! It all came back to him.
He recalled the whole thing, by Jove! Crikey, yes!
The letter swam before William’s eyes. A wave of tenderness engulfed
him. All that had passed recently between Jane and himself was
forgotten--her weirdness, her wish to live in the Metropolis, her
silvery laugh--everything. With one long, loving gulp, William Bates
dashed a not unmanly tear from his eye and, grabbing a hat and
raincoat, rushed out of the house and sprinted for the station.
At about the hour when William flung himself into the train, Jane
was sitting in her studio-apartment, pensively watching little Braid
Vardon as he sported on the floor. An odd melancholy had gripped her.
At first she had supposed that this was due to the rain, but now she
was beginning to realise that the thing went much deeper than that.
Reluctant though she was to confess it, she had to admit that what she
was suffering from was a genuine soul-sadness, due entirely to the fact
that she wanted William.
It was strange what a difference his going had made. William was the
sort of fellow you shoved into a corner and forgot about, but when he
was not there the whole scheme of things seemed to go blooey. Little
by little, since his departure, she had found the fascination of her
surroundings tending to wane, and the glamour of her new friends had
dwindled noticeably. Unless you were in the right vein for them,
Jane felt, they could be an irritating crowd. They smoked too many
cigarettes and talked too much. And not far from being the worst of
them, she decided, was Rodney Spelvin. It was with a sudden feeling
of despair that she remembered that she had invited him to tea this
afternoon and had got in a special seed-cake for the occasion. The last
thing in the world that she wanted to do was to watch Rodney Spelvin
eating cake.
It is a curious thing about men of the Spelvin type, how seldom they
really last. They get off to a flashy start and for a while convince
impressionable girls that the search for a soul-mate may be considered
formally over; but in a very short while reaction always sets in. There
had been a time when Jane could have sat and listened to Rodney Spelvin
for hours on end. Then she began to feel that from fifteen to twenty
minutes was about sufficient. And now the mere thought of having to
listen to him at all was crushing her like a heavy burden.
She had got thus far in her meditations when her attention was
attracted to little Braid Vardon, who was playing energetically in a
corner with some object which Jane could not distinguish in the dim
light.
“What have you got there, dear?” she asked.
“Wah,” said little Braid, a child of few words, proceeding with his
activities.
Jane rose and walked across the room. A sudden feeling had come to her,
the remorseful feeling that for some time now she had been neglecting
the child. How seldom nowadays did she trouble to join in his pastimes!
“Let mother play too,” she said, gently. “What are you playing? Trains?”
“Golf.”
Jane uttered a sharp exclamation. With a keen pang she saw that what
the child had got hold of was William’s spare mashie. So he had left it
behind after all! Since the night of his departure it must have been
lying unnoticed behind some chair or sofa.
For a moment the only sensation Jane felt was an accentuation of
that desolate feeling which had been with her all day. How many a
time had she stood by William and watched him foozle with this club!
Inextricably associated with him it was, and her eyes filled with
sudden tears. And then she was abruptly conscious of a new, a more
violent emotion, something akin to panic fear. She blinked, hoping
against hope that she had been mistaken. But no. When she opened her
eyes and looked again she saw what she had seen before.
_The child was holding the mashie all wrong._
“Braid!” gasped Jane in an agony.
All the mother-love in her was shrieking at her, reproaching her.
She realised now how paltry, how greedily self-centred she had been.
Thinking only of her own pleasures, how sorely she had neglected her
duty as a mother! Long ere this, had she been worthy of that sacred
relation, she would have been brooding over her child, teaching him at
her knee the correct Vardon grip, shielding him from bad habits, seeing
to it that he did not get his hands in front of the ball, putting him
on the right path as regarded the slow back-swing. But, absorbed in
herself, she had sacrificed him to her shallow ambitions. And now there
he was, grasping the club as if it had been a spade and scooping with
it like one of those twenty-four handicap men whom the hot weather
brings out on seaside links.
She shuddered to the very depths of her soul. Before her eyes there
rose a vision of her son, grown to manhood, reproaching her. “If you
had but taught me the facts of life when I was a child, mother,” she
seemed to hear him say, “I would not now be going round in a hundred
and twenty, rising to a hundred and forty in anything like a high wind.”
She snatched the club from his hands with a passionate cry. And at this
precise moment in came Rodney Spelvin, all ready for tea.
“Ah, little one!” said Rodney Spelvin, gaily.
Something in her appearance must have startled him, for he stopped and
looked at her with concern.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
Jane pulled herself together with an effort.
“No, quite well. Ha, ha!” she replied, hysterically.
She stared at him wildly, as she might have stared at a caterpillar in
her salad. If it had not been for this man, she felt, she would have
been with William in their snug little cottage, a happy wife. If it
had not been for this man, her only child would have been laying the
foundations of a correct swing under the eyes of a conscientious pro.
If it had not been for this man--She waved him distractedly to the door.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Thank you so much for calling.”
Rodney Spelvin gaped. This had been the quickest and most tealess
tea-party he had ever assisted at.
“You want me to go?” he said, incredulously.
“Yes, go! go!”
Rodney Spelvin cast a wistful glance at the gate-leg table. He had had
a light lunch, and the sight of the seed-cake affected him deeply. But
there seemed nothing to be done. He moved reluctantly to the door.
“Well, good-bye,” he said. “Thanks for a very pleasant afternoon.”
“So glad to have seen you,” said Jane, mechanically.
The door closed. Jane returned to her thoughts. But she was not alone
for long. A few minutes later there entered the female cubist painter
from downstairs, a manly young woman with whom she had become fairly
intimate.
“Oh, Bates, old chap!” said the cubist painter.
Jane looked up.
“Yes, Osbaldistone?”
“Just came in to borrow a cigarette. Used up all mine.”
“So have I, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad. Oh, well,” said Miss Osbaldistone, resignedly, “I suppose
I’ll have to go out and get wet. I wish I had had the sense to stop
Rodney Spelvin and send him. I met him on the stairs.”
“Yes, he was in here just now,” said Jane.
Miss Osbaldistone laughed in her hearty manly way.
“Good boy, Rodney,” she said, “but too smooth for my taste. A little
too ready with the salve.”
“Yes?” said Jane, absently.
“Has he pulled that one on you yet about your being the original of the
heroine of _The Purple Fan_?”
“Why, yes,” said Jane, surprised. “He did tell me that he had drawn
Eulalie from me.”
Her visitor emitted another laugh that shook the samovars.
“He tells every girl he meets the same thing.”
“What!”
“Oh yes. It’s his first move. He actually had the nerve to try to
spring it on me. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s a bad stunt. Most girls
like it. You’re sure you’ve no cigarettes? No? Well, how about a shot
of cocaine? Out of that too? Oh, well, I’ll be going, then. Pip-pip,
Bates.”
“Toodle-oo, Osbaldistone,” said Jane, dizzily. Her brain was reeling.
She groped her way to the table, and in a sort of trance cut herself a
slice of cake.
“Wah!” said little Braid Vardon. He toddled forward, anxious to count
himself in on the share-out.
Jane gave him some cake. Having ruined his life, it was, she felt,
the least she could do. In a spasm of belated maternal love she also
slipped him a jam-sandwich. But how trivial and useless these things
seemed now.
“Braid!” she cried, suddenly.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“Why?”
“Let mother show you how to hold that mashie.”
“What’s a mashie?”
A new gash opened in Jane’s heart. Four years old, and he didn’t know
what a mashie was. And at only a slightly advanced age Bobby Jones had
been playing in the American Open Championship.
“This is a mashie,” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty.
“Why?”
“It is called a mashie.”
“What is?”
“This club.”
“Why?”
The conversation was becoming too metaphysical for Jane. She took the
club from him and closed her hands over it.
“Now, look, dear,” she said, tenderly. “Watch how mother does it. She
puts the fingers--”
A voice spoke, a voice that had been absent all too long from Jane’s
life.
“You’ll pardon me, old girl, but you’ve got the right hand much too far
over. You’ll hook for a certainty.”
In the doorway, large and dripping, stood William. Jane stared at him
dumbly.
“William!” she gasped at length.
“Hullo, Jane!” said William. “Hullo, Braid! Thought I’d look in.”
There was a long silence.
“Beastly weather,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Wet and all that,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
There was another silence.
“Oh, by the way, Jane,” said William. “Knew there was something I
wanted to say. You know those violets?”
“Violets?”
“White violets. You remember those white violets I’ve been sending you
every year on our wedding anniversary? Well, what I mean to say, our
lives are parted and all that sort of thing, but you won’t mind if I
go on sending them--what? Won’t hurt you, what I’m driving at, and’ll
please me, see what I mean? So, well, to put the thing in a nutshell,
if you haven’t any objection, that’s that.”
Jane reeled against the gate-leg table.
“William! Was it you who sent those violets?”
“Absolutely. Who did you think it was?”
“William!” cried Jane, and flung herself into his arms.
William scooped her up gratefully. This was the sort of thing he
had been wanting for weeks past. He could do with a lot of this. He
wouldn’t have suggested it himself, but, seeing that she felt that way,
he was all for it.
“William,” said Jane, “can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, rather,” said William. “Like a shot. Though, I mean to say,
nothing to forgive, and all that sort of thing.”
“We’ll go back right away to our dear little cottage.”
“Fine!”
“We’ll never leave it again.”
“Topping!”
“I love you,” said Jane, “more than life itself.”
“Good egg!” said William.
Jane turned with shining eyes to little Braid Vardon.
“Braid, we’re going home with daddy!”
“Where?”
“Home. To our little cottage.”
“What’s a cottage?”
“The house where we used to be before we came here.”
“What’s here?”
“This is.”
“Which?”
“Where we are now.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you what, old girl,” said William. “Just shove a green-baize
cloth over that kid, and then start in and brew me about five pints
of tea as strong and hot as you can jolly well make it. Otherwise I’m
going to get the cold of a lifetime.”
CHAPTER IX
THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN
It was an afternoon on which one would have said that all Nature
smiled. The air was soft and balmy; the links, fresh from the rains of
spring, glistened in the pleasant sunshine; and down on the second tee
young Clifford Wimple, in a new suit of plus-fours, had just sunk two
balls in the lake, and was about to sink a third. No element, in short,
was lacking that might be supposed to make for quiet happiness.
And yet on the forehead of the Oldest Member, as he sat beneath the
chestnut tree on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, there was
a peevish frown; and his eye, gazing down at the rolling expanse of
turf, lacked its customary genial benevolence. His favourite chair,
consecrated to his private and personal use by unwritten law, had been
occupied by another. That is the worst of a free country--liberty so
often degenerates into licence.
The Oldest Member coughed.
“I trust,” he said, “you find that chair comfortable?”
The intruder, who was the club’s hitherto spotless secretary, glanced
up in a goofy manner.
“Eh?”
“That chair--you find it fits snugly to the figure?”
“Chair? Figure? Oh, you mean this chair? Oh yes.”
“I am gratified and relieved,” said the Oldest Member.
There was a silence.
“Look here,” said the secretary, “what would you do in a case like
this? You know I’m engaged?”
“I do. And no doubt your _fiancée_ is missing you. Why not go in search
of her?”
“She’s the sweetest girl on earth.”
“I should lose no time.”
“But jealous. And just now I was in my office, and that Mrs. Pettigrew
came in to ask if there was any news of the purse which she lost
a couple of days ago. It had just been brought to my office, so I
produced it; whereupon the infernal woman, in a most unsuitably girlish
manner, flung her arms round my neck and kissed me on my bald spot. And
at that moment Adela came in. Death,” said the secretary, “where is thy
sting?”
The Oldest Member’s pique melted. He had a feeling heart.
“Most unfortunate. What did you say?”
“I hadn’t time to say anything. She shot out too quick.”
The Oldest Member clicked his tongue sympathetically.
“These misunderstandings between young and ardent hearts are very
frequent,” he said. “I could tell you at least fifty cases of the same
kind. The one which I will select is the story of Jane Packard, William
Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
“You told me that the other day. Jane Packard got engaged to Rodney
Spelvin, the poet, but the madness passed and she married William
Bates, who was a golfer.”
“This is another story of the trio.”
“You told me that one, too. After Jane Packard married William Bates
she fell once more under the spell of Spelvin, but repented in time.”
“This is still another story. Making three in all.”
The secretary buried his face in his hands.
“Oh, well,” he said, “go ahead. What does anything matter now?”
“First,” said the Oldest Member, “let us make ourselves comfortable.
Take this chair. It is easier than the one in which you are sitting.”
“No, thanks.”
“I insist.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Woof!” said the Oldest Member, settling himself luxuriously.
With an eye now full of kindly good-will, he watched young Clifford
Wimple play his fourth. Then, as the silver drops flashed up into the
sun, he nodded approvingly and began.
The story which I am about to relate (said the Oldest Member) begins at
a time when Jane and William had been married some seven years. Jane’s
handicap was eleven, William’s twelve, and their little son, Braid
Vardon, had just celebrated his sixth birthday.
Ever since that dreadful time, two years before, when, lured by the
glamour of Rodney Spelvin, she had taken a studio in the artistic
quarter, dropped her golf, and practically learned to play the ukelele,
Jane had been unremitting in her efforts to be a good mother and to
bring up her son on the strictest principles. And, in order that his
growing mind might have every chance, she had invited William’s younger
sister, Anastatia, to spend a week or two with them and put the child
right on the true functions of the mashie. For Anastatia had reached
the semi-finals of the last Ladies’ Open Championship and, unlike many
excellent players, had the knack of teaching.
On the evening on which this story opens the two women were sitting
in the drawing-room, chatting. They had finished tea; and Anastatia,
with the aid of a lump of sugar, a spoon, and some crumbled cake, was
illustrating the method by which she had got out of the rough on the
fifth at Squashy Hollow.
“You’re wonderful!” said Jane, admiringly. “And such a good influence
for Braid! You’ll give him his lesson to-morrow afternoon as usual?”
“I shall have to make it the morning,” said Anastatia. “I’ve promised
to meet a man in town in the afternoon.”
As she spoke there came into her face a look so soft and dreamy that
it aroused Jane as if a bradawl had been driven into her leg. As her
history has already shown, there was a strong streak of romance in Jane
Bates.
“Who is he?” she asked, excitedly.
“A man I met last summer,” said Anastatia.
And she sighed with such abandon that Jane could no longer hold in
check her womanly nosiness.
“Do you love him?” she cried.
“Like bricks,” whispered Anastatia.
“Does he love you?”
“Sometimes I think so.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rodney Spelvin.”
“What!”
“Oh, I know he writes the most awful bilge,” said Anastatia,
defensively, misinterpreting the yowl of horror which had proceeded
from Jane. “All the same, he’s a darling.”
Jane could not speak. She stared at her sister-in-law aghast. Although
she knew that if you put a driver in her hands she could paste the ball
into the next county, there always seemed to her something fragile and
helpless about Anastatia. William’s sister was one of those small,
rose-leaf girls with big blue eyes to whom good men instinctively want
to give a stroke a hole and on whom bad men automatically prey. And
when Jane reflected that Rodney Spelvin had to all intents and purposes
preyed upon herself, who stood five foot seven in her shoes and, but
for an innate love of animals, could have felled an ox with a blow,
she shuddered at the thought of how he would prey on this innocent
half-portion.
“You really love him?” she quavered.
“If he beckoned to me in the middle of a medal round, I would come to
him,” said Anastatia.
Jane realised that further words were useless. A sickening sense of
helplessness obsessed her. Something ought to be done about this
terrible thing, but what could she do? She was so ashamed of her past
madness that not even to warn this girl could she reveal that she had
once been engaged to Rodney Spelvin herself; that he had recited poetry
on the green while she was putting; and that, later, he had hypnotised
her into taking William and little Braid to live in a studio full of
samovars. These revelations would no doubt open Anastatia’s eyes, but
she could not make them.
And then, suddenly, Fate pointed out a way.
It was Jane’s practice to go twice a week to the cinema palace in the
village; and two nights later she set forth as usual and took her
place just as the entertainment was about to begin.
At first she was only mildly interested. The title of the picture,
“Tried in the Furnace,” had suggested nothing to her. Being a regular
patron of the silver screen, she knew that it might quite easily turn
out to be an educational film on the subject of clinker-coal. But as
the action began to develop she found herself leaning forward in her
seat, blindly crushing a caramel between her fingers. For scarcely had
the operator started to turn the crank when inspiration came to her.
Of the main plot of “Tried in the Furnace” she retained, when finally
she reeled out into the open air, only a confused recollection. It
had something to do with money not bringing happiness or happiness
not bringing money, she could not remember which. But the part which
remained graven upon her mind was the bit where Gloria Gooch goes by
night to the apartments of the libertine, to beg him to spare her
sister, whom he has entangled in his toils.
Jane saw her duty clearly. She must go to Rodney Spelvin and conjure
him by the memory of their ancient love to spare Anastatia.
* * * * *
It was not the easiest of tasks to put this scheme into operation.
Gloria Gooch, being married to a scholarly man who spent nearly all
his time in a library a hundred yards long, had been fortunately
situated in the matter of paying visits to libertines; but for Jane the
job was more difficult. William expected her to play a couple of rounds
with him in the morning and another in the afternoon, which rather cut
into her time. However, Fate was still on her side, for one morning at
breakfast William announced that business called him to town.
“Why don’t you come too?” he said.
Jane started.
“No. No, I don’t think I will, thanks.”
“Give you lunch somewhere.”
“No. I want to stay here and do some practice-putting.”
“All right. I’ll try to get back in time for a round in the evening.”
Remorse gnawed at Jane’s vitals. She had never deceived William before.
She kissed him with even more than her usual fondness when he left to
catch the ten-forty-five. She waved to him till he was out of sight;
then, bounding back into the house, leaped at the telephone and, after
a series of conversations with the Marks-Morris Glue Factory, the Poor
Pussy Home for Indigent Cats, and Messrs. Oakes, Oakes, and Parbury,
dealers in fancy goods, at last found herself in communication with
Rodney Spelvin.
“Rodney?” she said, and held her breath, fearful at this breaking of
a two years’ silence and yet loath to hear another strange voice say
“Wadnumjerwant?” “Is that you, Rodney?”
“Yes. Who is that?”
“Mrs. Bates. Rodney, can you give me lunch at the Alcazar to-day at
one?”
“Can I!” Not even the fact that some unknown basso had got on the wire
and was asking if that was Mr. Bootle could blur the enthusiasm in his
voice. “I should say so!”
“One o’clock, then,” said Jane. His enthusiastic response had relieved
her. If by merely speaking she could stir him so, to bend him to her
will when they met face to face would be pie.
“One o’clock,” said Rodney.
Jane hung up the receiver and went to her room to try on hats.
* * * * *
The impression came to Jane, when she entered the lobby of the
restaurant and saw him waiting, that Rodney Spelvin looked somehow
different from the Rodney she remembered. His handsome face had a
deeper and more thoughtful expression, as if he had been through some
ennobling experience.
“Well, here I am,” she said, going to him and affecting a jauntiness
which she did not feel.
He looked at her, and there was in his eyes that unmistakable goggle
which comes to men suddenly addressed in a public spot by women whom,
to the best of their recollection, they do not know from Eve.
“How are you?” he said. He seemed to pull himself together. “You’re
looking splendid.”
“You’re looking fine,” said Jane.
“You’re looking awfully well,” said Rodney.
“You’re looking awfully well,” said Jane.
“You’re looking fine,” said Rodney.
There was a pause.
“You’ll excuse my glancing at my watch,” said Rodney. “I have an
appointment to lunch with--er--somebody here, and it’s past the time.”
“But you’re lunching with me,” said Jane, puzzled.
“With you?”
“Yes. I rang you up this morning.”
Rodney gaped.
“Was it you who ’phoned? I thought you said ‘Miss Bates.’”
“No, Mrs. Bates.”
“Mrs. Bates?”
“Mrs. Bates.”
“Of course. You’re Mrs. Bates.”
“Had you forgotten me?” said Jane, in spite of herself a little piqued.
“Forgotten you, dear lady! As if I could!” said Rodney, with a return
of his old manner. “Well, shall we go in and have lunch?”
“All right,” said Jane.
She felt embarrassed and ill at ease. The fact that Rodney had
obviously succeeded in remembering her only after the effort of a
lifetime seemed to her to fling a spanner into the machinery of her
plans at the very outset. It was going to be difficult, she realised,
to conjure him by the memory of their ancient love to spare Anastatia;
for the whole essence of the idea of conjuring any one by the memory of
their ancient love is that the party of the second part should be aware
that there ever was such a thing.
At the luncheon-table conversation proceeded fitfully. Rodney said that
this morning he could have sworn it was going to rain, and Jane said
she had thought so, too, and Rodney said that now it looked as if the
weather might hold up, and Jane said Yes, didn’t it? and Rodney said
he hoped the weather would hold up because rain was such a nuisance,
and Jane said Yes, wasn’t it? Rodney said yesterday had been a nice
day, and Jane said Yes, and Rodney said that it seemed to be getting a
little warmer, and Jane said Yes, and Rodney said that summer would be
here at any moment now, and Jane said Yes, wouldn’t it? and Rodney said
he hoped it would not be too hot this summer, but that, as a matter of
fact, when you came right down to it, what one minded was not so much
the heat as the humidity, and Jane said Yes, didn’t one?
In short, by the time they rose and left the restaurant, not a word
had been spoken that could have provoked the censure of the sternest
critic. Yet William Bates, catching sight of them as they passed down
the aisle, started as if he had been struck by lightning. He had
happened to find himself near the Alcazar at lunch-time and had dropped
in for a chop; and, peering round the pillar which had hidden his table
from theirs, he stared after them with saucer-like eyes.
“Oh, dash it!” said William.
This William Bates, I have indicated in my previous references to him,
was not an abnormally emotional or temperamental man. Built physically
on the lines of a motor-lorry, he had much of that vehicle’s placid and
even phlegmatic outlook on life. Few things had the power to ruffle
William, but, unfortunately, it so happened that one of these things
was Rodney Spelvin. He had never been able entirely to overcome his
jealousy of this man. It had been Rodney who had come within an ace of
scooping Jane from him in the days when she had been Miss Packard. It
had been Rodney who had temporarily broken up his home some years later
by persuading Jane to become a member of the artistic set. And now,
unless his eyes jolly well deceived him, this human gumboil was once
more busy on his dastardly work. Too dashed thick, was William’s view
of the matter; and he gnashed his teeth in such a spasm of resentful
fury that a man lunching at the next table told the waiter to switch
off the electric fan, as it had begun to creak unendurably.
* * * * *
Jane was reading in the drawing-room when William reached home that
night.
“Had a nice day?” asked William.
“Quite nice,” said Jane.
“Play golf?” asked William.
“Just practised,” said Jane.
“Lunch at the club?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I saw that bloke Spelvin in town,” said William.
Jane wrinkled her forehead.
“Spelvin? Oh, you mean Rodney Spelvin? Did you? I see he’s got a new
book coming out.”
“You never run into him these days, do you?”
“Oh no. It must be two years since I saw him.”
“Oh?” said William. “Well, I’ll be going upstairs and dressing.”
It seemed to Jane, as the door closed, that she heard a curious
clicking noise, and she wondered for a moment if little Braid had got
out of bed and was playing with the Mah-Jongg counters. But it was only
William gnashing his teeth.
* * * * *
There is nothing sadder in this life than the spectacle of a husband
and wife with practically identical handicaps drifting apart; and to
dwell unnecessarily on such a spectacle is, to my mind, ghoulish. It
is not my purpose, therefore, to weary you with a detailed description
of the hourly widening of the breach between this once ideally united
pair. Suffice it to say that within a few days of the conversation
just related the entire atmosphere of this happy home had completely
altered. On the Tuesday, William had excused himself from the morning
round on the plea that he had promised Peter Willard a match, and Jane
said What a pity! On Tuesday afternoon William said that his head
ached, and Jane said Isn’t that too bad? On Wednesday morning William
said he had lumbago, and Jane, her sensitive feelings now deeply
wounded, said Oh, had he? After that, it came to be agreed between them
by silent compact that they should play together no more.
Also, they began to avoid one another in the house. Jane would sit in
the drawing-room, while William retired down the passage to his den. In
short, if you had added a couple of ikons and a photograph of Trotsky,
you would have had a _mise en scène_ which would have fitted a Russian
novel like the paper on the wall.
One evening, about a week after the beginning of this tragic state of
affairs, Jane was sitting in the drawing-room, trying to read _Braid
on Taking Turf_. But the print seemed blurred and the philosophy too
metaphysical to be grasped. She laid the book down and stared sadly
before her.
Every moment of these black days had affected Jane like a stymie on
the last green. She could not understand how it was that William
should have come to suspect, but that he did suspect was plain; and
she writhed on the horns of a dilemma. All she had to do to win
him back again was to go to him and tell him of Anastatia’s fatal
entanglement. But what would happen then? Undoubtedly he would feel it
his duty as a brother to warn the girl against Rodney Spelvin; and Jane
instinctively knew that William warning any one against Rodney Spelvin
would sound like a private of the line giving his candid opinion of the
sergeant-major.
Inevitably, in this case, Anastatia, a spirited girl and deeply in
love, would take offence at his words and leave the house. And if she
left the house, what would be the effect on little Braid’s mashie-play?
Already, in less than a fortnight, the gifted girl had taught him more
about the chip-shot from ten to fifteen yards off the green than the
local pro. had been able to do in two years. Her departure would be
absolutely disastrous.
What it amounted to was that she must sacrifice her husband’s happiness
or her child’s future; and the problem of which was to get the loser’s
end was becoming daily more insoluble.
She was still brooding on it when the postman arrived with the evening
mail, and the maid brought the letters into the drawing-room.
Jane sorted them out. There were three for William, which she gave
to the maid to take to him in his den. There were two for herself,
both bills. And there was one for Anastatia, in the well-remembered
handwriting of Rodney Spelvin.
Jane placed this letter on the mantel-piece, and stood looking at
it like a cat at a canary. Anastatia was away for the day, visiting
friends who lived a few stations down the line; and every womanly
instinct in Jane urged her to get hold of a kettle and steam the gum
off the envelope. She had almost made up her mind to disembowel the
thing and write “Opened in error” on it, when the telephone suddenly
went off like a bomb and nearly startled her into a decline. Coming at
that moment it sounded like the Voice of Conscience.
“Hullo?” said Jane.
“Hullo!” replied a voice.
Jane clucked like a hen with uncontrollable emotion. It was Rodney.
“Is that you?” asked Rodney
“Yes,” said Jane.
And so it was, she told herself.
“Your voice is like music,” said Rodney.
This may or may not have been the case, but at any rate it was exactly
like every other female voice when heard on the telephone. Rodney
prattled on without a suspicion.
“Have you got my letter yet?”
“No,” said Jane. She hesitated. “What was in it?” she asked,
tremulously.
“It was to ask you to come to my house to-morrow at four.”
“To your house!” faltered Jane.
“Yes. Everything is ready. I will send the servants out, so that we
shall be quite alone. You will come, won’t you?”
The room was shimmering before Jane’s eyes, but she regained command of
herself with a strong effort.
“Yes,” she said. “I will be there.”
She spoke softly, but there was a note of menace in her voice. Yes,
she would indeed be there. From the very moment when this man had made
his monstrous proposal, she had been asking herself what Gloria Gooch
would have done in a crisis like this. And the answer was plain. Gloria
Gooch, if her sister-in-law was intending to visit the apartments of a
libertine, would have gone there herself to save the poor child from
the consequences of her infatuated folly.
“Yes,” said Jane, “I will be there.”
“You have made me the happiest man in the world,” said Rodney. “I will
meet you at the corner of the street at four, then.” He paused. “What
is that curious clicking noise?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I noticed it myself. Something wrong with
the wire, I suppose.”
“I thought it was somebody playing the castanets. Until to-morrow,
then, good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Jane replaced the receiver. And William, who had been listening to
every word of the conversation on the extension in his den, replaced
his receiver, too.
* * * * *
Anastatia came back from her visit late that night. She took her
letter, and read it without comment. At breakfast next morning she said
that she would be compelled to go into town that day.
“I want to see my dressmaker,” she said.
“I’ll come, too,” said Jane. “I want to see my dentist.”
“So will I,” said William. “I want to see my lawyer.”
“That will be nice,” said Anastatia, after a pause.
“Very nice,” said Jane, after another pause.
“We might all lunch together,” said Anastatia. “My appointment is not
till four.”
“I should love it,” said Jane. “My appointment is at four, too.”
“So is mine,” said William.
“What a coincidence!” said Jane, trying to speak brightly.
“Yes,” said William. He may have been trying to speak brightly, too;
but, if so, he failed. Jane was too young to have seen Salvini in
“Othello,” but, had she witnessed that great tragedian’s performance,
she could not have failed to be struck by the resemblance between his
manner in the pillow scene and William’s now.
“Then shall we all lunch together?” said Anastatia.
“I shall lunch at my club,” said William, curtly.
“William seems to have a grouch,” said Anastatia.
“Ha!” said William.
He raised his fork and drove it with sickening violence at his sausage.
* * * * *
So Jane had a quiet little woman’s lunch at a confectioner’s alone with
Anastatia. Jane ordered a tongue-and-lettuce sandwich, two macaroons,
marsh-mallows, ginger-ale and cocoa; and Anastatia ordered pineapple
chunks with whipped cream, tomatoes stuffed with beetroot, three dill
pickles, a raspberry nut sundae, and hot chocolate. And, while getting
outside this garbage, they talked merrily, as women will, of every
subject but the one that really occupied their minds. When Anastatia
got up and said good-bye with a final reference to her dressmaker,
Jane shuddered at the depths of deceit to which the modern girl can
sink.
It was now about a quarter to three, so Jane had an hour to kill before
going to the rendezvous. She wandered about the streets, and never
had time appeared to her to pass so slowly, never had a city been so
congested with hard-eyed and suspicious citizens. Every second person
she met seemed to glare at her as if he or she had guessed her secret.
The very elements joined in the general disapproval. The sky had turned
a sullen grey, and faraway thunder muttered faintly, like an impatient
golfer held up on the tee by a slow foursome. It was a relief when
at length she found herself at the back of Rodney Spelvin’s house,
standing before the scullery window, which it was her intention to
force with the pocket-knife won in happier days as second prize in a
competition at a summer hotel for those with handicaps above eighteen.
But the relief did not last long. Despite the fact that she was about
to enter this evil house with the best motives, a sense of almost
intolerable guilt oppressed her. If William should ever get to know of
this! Wow! felt Jane.
How long she would have hesitated before the window, one cannot say.
But at this moment, glancing guiltily round, she happened to catch the
eye of a cat which was sitting on a near-by wall, and she read in this
cat’s eye such cynical derision that the urge came upon her to get out
of its range as quickly as possible. It was a cat that had manifestly
seen a lot of life, and it was plainly putting an entirely wrong
construction on her behaviour. Jane shivered, and, with a quick jerk
prised the window open and climbed in.
It was two years since she had entered this house, but once she had
reached the hall she remembered its topography perfectly. She mounted
the stairs to the large studio sitting-room on the first floor, the
scene of so many Bohemian parties in that dark period of her artistic
life. It was here, she knew, that Rodney would bring his victim.
The studio was one of those dim, over-ornamented rooms which appeal to
men like Rodney Spelvin. Heavy curtains hung in front of the windows.
One corner was cut off by a high-backed Chesterfield. At the far end
was an alcove, curtained like the windows. Once Jane had admired this
studio, but now it made her shiver. It seemed to her one of those nests
in which, as the subtitle of “Tried in the Furnace” had said, only
eggs of evil are hatched. She paced the thick carpet restlessly, and
suddenly there came to her the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Jane stopped, every muscle tense. The moment had arrived. She faced
the door, tight-lipped. It comforted her a little in this crisis
to reflect that Rodney was not one of those massive Ethel M. Dell
libertines who might make things unpleasant for an intruder. He was
only a welter-weight egg of evil; and, if he tried to start anything, a
girl of her physique would have little or no difficulty in knocking the
stuffing out of him.
The footsteps reached the door. The handle turned. The door opened. And
in strode William Bates, followed by two men in bowler hats.
“Ha!” said William.
Jane’s lips parted, but no sound came from them. She staggered back a
pace or two. William, advancing into the centre of the room, folded his
arms and gazed at her with burning eyes.
“So,” said William, and the words seemed forced like drops of vitriol
from between his clenched teeth, “I find you here, dash it!”
Jane choked convulsively. Years ago, when an innocent child, she had
seen a conjurer produce a rabbit out of a top-hat which an instant
before had been conclusively proved to be empty. The sudden apparition
of William affected her with much the same sensations as she had
experienced then.
“How-ow-ow--?” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” said William, coldly.
“How-ow-ow--?”
“Explain yourself,” said William.
“How-ow-ow did you get here? And who-oo-oo are these men?”
William seemed to become aware for the first time of the presence of
his two companions. He moved a hand in a hasty gesture of introduction.
“Mr. Reginald Brown and Mr. Cyril Delancey--my wife,” he said, curtly.
The two men bowed slightly and raised their bowler hats.
“Pleased to meet you,” said one.
“Most awfully charmed,” said the other.
“They are detectives,” said William.
“Detectives!”
“From the Quick Results Agency,” said William. “When I became aware of
your clandestine intrigue, I went to the agency and they gave me their
two best men.”
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Brown, blushing a little.
“Most frightfully decent of you to put it that way,” said Mr. Delancey.
William regarded Jane sternly.
“I knew you were going to be here at four o’clock,” he said. “I
overheard you making the assignation on the telephone.”
“Oh, William!”
“Woman,” said William, “where is your paramour?”
“Really, really,” said Mr. Delancey, deprecatingly.
“Keep it clean,” urged Mr. Brown.
“Your partner in sin, where is he? I am going to take him and tear him
into little bits and stuff him down his throat and make him swallow
himself.”
“Fair enough,” said Mr. Brown.
“Perfectly in order,” said Mr. Delancey.
Jane uttered a stricken cry.
“William,” she screamed, “I can explain all.”
“All?” said Mr. Delancey.
“All?” said Mr. Brown.
“All,” said Jane.
“All?” said William.
“All,” said Jane.
William sneered bitterly.
“I’ll bet you can’t,” he said.
“I’ll bet I can,” said Jane.
“Well?”
“I came here to save Anastatia.”
“Anastatia?”
“Anastatia.”
“My sister?”
“Your sister.”
“His sister Anastatia,” explained Mr. Brown to Mr. Delancey in an
undertone.
“What from?” asked William.
“From Rodney Spelvin. Oh, William, can’t you understand?”
“No, I’m dashed if I can.”
“I, too,” said Mr. Delancey, “must confess myself a little fogged. And
you, Reggie?”
“Completely, Cyril,” said Mr. Brown, removing his bowler hat with a
puzzled frown, examining the maker’s name, and putting it on again.
“The poor child is infatuated with this man.”
“With the bloke Spelvin?”
“Yes. She is coming here with him at four o’clock.”
“Important,” said Mr. Brown, producing a note-book and making an entry.
“Important, if true,” agreed Mr. Delancey.
“But I heard you making the appointment with the bloke Spelvin over the
’phone,” said William.
“He thought I was Anastatia. And I came here to save her.”
* * * * *
William was silent and thoughtful for a few moments.
“It all sounds very nice and plausible,” he said, “but there’s just one
thing wrong. I’m not a very clever sort of bird, but I can see where
your story slips up. If what you say is true, where is Anastatia?”
“Just coming in now,” whispered Jane. “Hist!”
“Hist, Reggie!” whispered Mr. Delancey.
They listened. Yes, the front door had banged, and feet were ascending
the staircase.
“Hide!” said Jane, urgently.
“Why?” said William.
“So that you can overhear what they say and jump out and confront
them.”
“Sound,” said Mr. Delancey.
“Very sound,” said Mr. Brown.
The two detectives concealed themselves in the alcove. William retired
behind the curtains in front of the window. Jane dived behind the
Chesterfield. A moment later the door opened.
Crouching in her corner, Jane could see nothing, but every word that
was spoken came to her ears; and with every syllable her horror
deepened.
“Give me your things,” she heard Rodney say, “and then we’ll go
upstairs.”
Jane shivered. The curtains by the window shook. From the direction of
the alcove there came a soft scratching sound, as the two detectives
made an entry in their note-books.
For a moment after this there was silence. Then Anastatia uttered a
sharp, protesting cry.
“Ah, no, no! Please, please!”
“But why not?” came Rodney’s voice.
“It is wrong--wrong.”
“I can’t see why.”
“It is, it is! You must not do that. Oh, please, please don’t hold so
tight.”
There was a swishing sound, and through the curtains before the window
a large form burst. Jane raised her head above the Chesterfield.
William was standing there, a menacing figure. The two detectives had
left the alcove and were moistening their pencils. And in the middle
of the room stood Rodney Spelvin, stooping slightly and grasping
Anastatia’s parasol in his hands.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why is it wrong to hold the dam’ thing
tight?” He looked up and perceived his visitors. “Ah, Bates,” he said,
absently. He turned to Anastatia again. “I should have thought that the
tighter you held it, the more force you would get into the shot.”
“But don’t you see, you poor zimp,” replied Anastatia, “that you’ve
got to keep the ball straight. If you grip the shaft as if you were
a drowning man clutching at a straw and keep your fingers under like
that, you’ll pull like the dickens and probably land out of bounds or
in the rough. What’s the good of getting force into the shot if the
ball goes in the wrong direction, you cloth-headed goof?”
“I see now,” said Rodney, humbly. “How right you always are!”
“Look here,” interrupted William, folding his arms. “What is the
meaning of this?”
“You want to grip firmly but lightly,” said Anastatia.
“Firmly but lightly,” echoed Rodney.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“And with the fingers. Not with the palms.”
“What is the meaning of this?” thundered William. “Anastatia, what are
you doing in this man’s rooms?”
“Giving him a golf lesson, of course. And I wish you wouldn’t
interrupt.”
“Yes, yes,” said Rodney, a little testily. “Don’t interrupt, Bates,
there’s a good fellow. Surely you have things to occupy you elsewhere?”
“We’ll go upstairs,” said Anastatia, “where we can be alone.”
“You will not go upstairs,” barked William.
“We shall get on much better there,” explained Anastatia. “Rodney has
fitted up the top-floor back as an indoor practising room.”
Jane darted forward with a maternal cry.
“My poor child, has the scoundrel dared to delude you by pretending to
be a golfer? Darling, he is nothing of the kind.”
Mr. Reginald Brown coughed. For some moments he had been twitching
restlessly.
“Talking of golf,” he said, “it might interest you to hear of a little
experience I had the other day at Marshy Moor. I had got a nice drive
off the tee, nothing record-breaking, you understand, but straight and
sweet. And what was my astonishment on walking up to play my second to
find--”
“A rather similar thing happened to me at Windy Waste last Tuesday,”
interrupted Mr. Delancey. “I had hooked my drive the merest trifle, and
my caddie said to me, ‘You’re out of bounds.’ ‘I am not out of bounds,’
I replied, perhaps a little tersely, for the lad had annoyed me by a
persistent habit of sniffing. ‘Yes, you are out of bounds,’ he said.
‘No, I am not out of bounds,’ I retorted. Well, believe me or believe
me not, when I got up to my ball--”
“Shut up!” said William.
“Just as you say, sir,” replied Mr. Delancey, courteously.
* * * * *
Rodney Spelvin drew himself up, and in spite of her loathing for his
villainy Jane could not help feeling what a noble and romantic figure
he made. His face was pale, but his voice did not falter.
“You are right,” he said. “I am not a golfer. But with the help of
this splendid girl here, I hope humbly to be one some day. Ah, I know
what you are going to say,” he went on, raising a hand. “You are about
to ask how a man who has wasted his life as I have done can dare to
entertain the mad dream of ever acquiring a decent handicap. But never
forget,” proceeded Rodney, in a low, quivering voice, “that Walter J.
Travis was nearly forty before he touched a club, and a few years later
he won the British Amateur.”
“True,” murmured William.
“True, true,” said Mr. Delancey and Mr. Brown. They lifted their bowler
hats reverently.
“I am thirty-three years old,” continued Rodney, “and for fourteen of
those thirty-three years I have been writing poetry--aye, and novels
with a poignant sex-appeal, and if ever I gave a thought to this
divine game it was but to sneer at it. But last summer I saw the light.”
“Glory! Glory!” cried Mr. Brown.
“One afternoon I was persuaded to try a drive. I took the club with a
mocking, contemptuous laugh.” He paused, and a wild light came into his
eyes. “I brought off a perfect pip,” he said, emotionally. “Two hundred
yards and as straight as a whistle. And, as I stood there gazing after
the ball, something seemed to run up my spine and bite me in the neck.
It was the golf-germ.”
“Always the way,” said Mr. Brown. “I remember the first drive I ever
made. I took a nice easy stance--”
“The first drive I made,” said Mr. Delancey, “you won’t believe this,
but it’s a fact, was a full--”
“From that moment,” continued Rodney Spelvin, “I have had but one
ambition--to somehow or other, cost what it might, get down into single
figures.” He laughed bitterly. “You see,” he said, “I cannot even speak
of this thing without splitting my infinitives. And even as I split my
infinitives, so did I split my drivers. After that first heavenly slosh
I didn’t seem able to do anything right.”
He broke off, his face working. William cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Yes, but dash it,” he said, “all this doesn’t explain why I find you
alone with my sister in what I might call your lair.”
“The explanation is simple,” said Rodney Spelvin. “This sweet girl is
the only person in the world who seems able to simply and intelligently
and in a few easily understood words make clear the knack of the thing.
There is none like her, none. I have been to pro. after pro., but not
one has been any good to me. I am a temperamental man, and there is
a lack of sympathy and human understanding about these professionals
which jars on my artist soul. They look at you as if you were a
half-witted child. They click their tongues. They make odd Scotch
noises. I could not endure the strain. And then this wonderful girl,
to whom in a burst of emotion I had confided my unhappy case, offered
to give me private lessons. So I went with her to some of those indoor
practising places. But here, too, my sensibilities were racked by the
fact that unsympathetic eyes observed me. So I fixed up a room here
where we could be alone.”
“And instead of going there,” said Anastatia, “we are wasting half the
afternoon talking.”
William brooded for a while. He was not a quick thinker.
“Well, look here,” he said at length, “this is the point. This is the
nub of the thing. This is where I want you to follow me very closely.
Have you asked Anastatia to marry you?”
“Marry me?” Rodney gazed at him, shocked. “Have I asked her to marry
me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who
have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in
the semi-final of last year’s Ladies’ Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a
_vers-libre_ poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love
her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and
for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would
not dare to ask her to marry me.”
Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter.
“You poor chump!” she cried. “Is that what has been the matter all this
time! I couldn’t make out what the trouble was. Why, I’m crazy about
you. I’ll marry you any time you give the word.”
Rodney reeled.
“What!”
“Of course I will.”
“Anastatia!”
“Rodney!”
He folded her in his arms.
“Well, I’m dashed,” said William. “It looks to me as if I had been
making rather a lot of silly fuss about nothing. Jane, I wronged you.”
“It was my fault!”
“No, no!”
“Yes, yes.”
“Jane!”
“William!”
He folded her in his arms. The two detectives, having entered the
circumstances in their note-books, looked at one another with moist
eyes.
“Cyril!” said Mr. Brown.
“Reggie!” said Mr. Delancey.
Their hands met in a brotherly clasp.
* * * * *
“And so,” concluded the Oldest Member, “all ended happily. The
storm-tossed lives of William Bates, Jane Packard, and Rodney Spelvin
came safely at long last into harbour. At the subsequent wedding
William and Jane’s present of a complete golfing outfit, including
eight dozen new balls, a cloth cap, and a pair of spiked shoes, was
generally admired by all who inspected the gifts during the reception.
“From that time forward the four of them have been inseparable. Rodney
and Anastatia took a little cottage close to that of William and Jane,
and rarely does a day pass without a close foursome between the two
couples. William and Jane being steady tens and Anastatia scratch and
Rodney a persevering eighteen, it makes an ideal match.”
“What does?” asked the secretary, waking from his reverie.
“This one.”
“Which?”
“I see,” said the Oldest Member, sympathetically, “that your troubles,
weighing on your mind, have caused you to follow my little narrative
less closely than you might have done. Never mind, I will tell it
again.”
* * * * *
“The story” (said the Oldest Member) “which I am about to relate begins
at a time when--”
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation errors and omissions have been corrected.
Page 139: “reviewed the the” changed to “reviewed the”
Page 171: “broke of the” changed to “broke off the”
Page 188: “dozed ecstasy” changed to “dazed ecstasy”
Page 212: “rocheting pheasant” changed to “rocketing pheasant”
Page 222: “extraordinary fine” changed to “extraordinarily fine”
Page 280: “much to far over” changed to “much too far over”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Divots" ***
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