The Golf Omnibus (37 page)

“You were there today 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 in 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 mustn'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 tomorrow. 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 tomorrow?”

“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 thing 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 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 tomorrow, 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.

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 to 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 warthog.”

“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.”