“Yes. All that is vitally important. Mrs Botts, I am sorry to say, is a trifle on the whimsy side. Perhaps you have read her books? They are three in number—My Chums the Pixies, How to Talk to the Flowers, and Many of My Best Friends are Mosquitoes. The programme calls for a good working knowledge of them all.”
“Who is ‘I’, against whose name you have written the phrase:
‘Symp. breeziness’?”
“That is little Irwin Botts, the son of the house. He is in love with Dorothy Lamour, and not making much of a go of it. He talks to me about her, and I endeavour to be breezily sympathetic.”
“And ‘A’?”
“Their poodle, Alphonse. The note is to remind me to conciliate him. He is a dog of wide influence, and cannot be ignored.”
“‘I poss., p., but w.o. for s.d.a.’?” is “If possible, pat, but watch out for sudden dash at ankles. He quick on his feet.”
I handed back the paper.
“Well,” I said, “it all seems a little elaborate, and I should have thought better results would have been obtained by having a direct pop at the girl, but I wish you luck.”
In the days which followed, I kept a watchful eye on Horace, for his story had interested me strangely. Now and then, I would see him pacing the terrace with Ponsford Botts at his side and catch references to Pat and Mike, together with an occasional “Begorrah,” and I noted how ringing was his guffaw as the other suddenly congealed with bulging eyes.
Once, as I strolled along the road, I heard a noise like machine-gun fire and turned the corner to find him slapping little Irwin’s shoulder in a breezy, elder-brotherly manner. His pockets were generally bulging with biscuits for Alphonse, and from time to time he would come and tell me how he was getting along with Mrs Botts’ books. These, he confessed, called for all that he had of resolution and fortitude, but he told me that he was slowly mastering their contents and already knew a lot more about pixies than most people.
It would all have been easier, he said, if he had been in a position to be able to concentrate his whole attention upon them. But of course he had his living to earn and could not afford to neglect his office work. He held a subordinate post in the well-known firm of R. P. Crumbles Inc., purveyors of Silver Sardines (The Sardine with A Soul), and R. P. Crumbles was a hard taskmaster. And, in addition to this, he had entered for the annual handicap competition known as the President’s Cup.
It was upon this latter topic, as the date of the tourney drew near, that he spoke almost as frequently and eloquently as upon the theme of his love. He had been playing golf, it appeared, for some seven years, and up till now had never come within even measurable distance of winning a trophy. Generally, he said, it was his putting that dished him. But recently, as the result of reading golf books, he had adopted a super-scientific system, and was now hoping for the best.
It was a stimulating experience to listen to his fine, frank enthusiasm. He spoke of the President’s Cup as some young knight of King Arthur’s Round Table might have spoken of the Holy Grail. And it was consequently with peculiar satisfaction that I noted his success in the early rounds. Step by step, he won his way into the semi-finals in his bracket, and was enabled to get triumphantly through that critical test owing to the fortunate circumstance of his opponent tripping over a passing cat on the eve of the match and spraining his ankle.
Many members of the club would, of course, have been fully competent to defeat Horace Bewstridge if they had sprained both ankles, or even broken both arms, but Mortimer Gooch, his antagonist, was not one of these. He scratched, and Horace walked over into the final.
His chances now, it seemed to me, were extremely good. According to how the semi-final in the other bracket went, he would be playing either Peter Willard, who would be as clay in his hands, or a certain Sir George Copstone, a visiting Englishman whom his employer, R. P. Crumbles, had put up for the club, and who by an odd coincidence was residing as a guest at the house of Ponsford Botts. I had watched this hand across the sea in action, and was convinced that Horace, provided he did not lose his nerve, could trim him nicely.
A meeting on the fifteenth green the afternoon before the match enabled me to convey these views to the young fellow. We were there to watch the finish of the opposition semi-final, and when Sir George Copstone had won this, I linked my arm in Horace’s and told him that in my opinion the thing was in the bag.
“If Peter Willard, our most outstanding golfing cripple, can take this man to the fifteenth, your victory should be a certainty.”
“Peter was receiving thirty-eight.”
“You could give him fifty. What is this Copstone? A twenty-four like yourself, is he not?”
“Yes.”
“Then you need feel no anxiety, my boy,” I said, for when I give a pep talk I like it to be a pep talk. “If you are not too busy to-night reading about pixies, you might be looking around your living-room for a spot to put that cup.”
He snorted devoutly, and I think he was about to burst into one of those ecstatic monologues of his, but at this moment we reached the terrace. And, as we did so, a harsh, metallic voice called his name, and I perceived, standing at some little distance, a beetle-browed man of formidable aspect, who looked like a cartoon of capital in a Labour paper. He was smoking a large cigar, with which he beckoned to Horace Bewstridge imperiously, and Horace, leaving my side, ambled up to him like a spaniel From the fact that, as he ambled, he was bleating “Oh, good evening, Mr Crumbles. Yes, Mr Crumbles. I’m coming, Mr Crumbles,” I deduced that this was the eminent sardine fancier who provided him with his weekly envelope.
Their conversation was not an extended one. R. P. Crumbles spoke rapidly and authoritatively for some moments, emphasising his remarks with swift, captain-of-industry prods at Horace’s breast-bone, and then he turned on his heel and strode off in a strong, economic royalist sort of way, and Horace came back to where I stood.
Now, I had noticed once or twice during the interview that the young fellow had seemed to totter on his axis, and as he drew nearer, his pallid face, with its starting eyes and drooping jaw, told me that all was not well.
“That was my boss,” he said, in a low, faint voice.
“So I had guessed. Why did he call the conference?” Horace Bewstridge beat his breast.
“It’s about Sir George Copstone.”
“What about him!?”
Horace Bewstridge clutched his hair.
“Apparently this Copstone runs a vast system of chain stores throughout the British Isles, and old Crumbles has been fawning on him ever since his arrival in the hope of getting him to take on the Silver Sardine and propagate it over there. He says that this is a big opportunity for the dear old firm and that it behoves all of us to do our bit and push it along. So——”
“So—?”
Horace Bewstridge rent his pullover.
“So,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve got to play Customer’s Golf to-morrow and let the man win that cup.”
“Horace!” I cried.
I would have seized his hand and pressed it, but it was not there. Horace Bewstridge had left me. All that my eye encountered was a swirl of dust and his flying form disappearing in the direction of the bar. I understood and sympathized. There are moments in the life of every man when human consolation cannot avail and only two or three quick will meet the case.
I did not see him again until we met next afternoon on the first tee for the start of the final.
You, being a newcomer here (said the Oldest Member) may possibly have formed an erroneous impression regarding this President’s Cup of which I have been speaking. Its name, I admit, is misleading, suggesting as it does the guerdon of some terrific tourney baffled for by the cream of the local golfing talent. One pictures perspiring scratch men straining every nerve and history being made by amateur champions.
As a matter of fact, it is open for competition only to those whose handicap is not lower than twenty-four, and excites little interest outside the ranks o
f the submerged tenth who play for it. As a sporting event on our fixture list, as I often have to explain, it may be classed somewhere between the Grandmothers’ Umbrella and the All day Sucker competed for by children who have not passed their seventh year.
The final, accordingly, did not attract a large gate. In fact, I think I was the only spectator. I was thus enabled to obtain an excellent view of the contestants and to follow their play to the best advantage. And, as on the previous occasions when I had watched him perform, I found myself speculating with no little bewilderment as to how Horace’s opponent had got that way.
Sir George Copstone was one of those tall, thin, bony Englishmen who seem to have been left over from the eighteen-sixties. He did not actually wear long side-whiskers of the type known as Piccadilly Weepers, nor did he really flaunt a fore-and-aft deer-stalker cap of the type affected by Sherlock Holmes, but you got the illusion that this was so, and it was partly the unnerving effect of his appearance on his opponents that had facilitated his making his way into the final. But what had been the basic factor in his success was his method of play.
A deliberate man, this Copstone. Before making a shot, he would inspect his enormous bag of clubs and take out one after another, slowly, as if he were playing spillikens. Having at length made his selection, he would stand motionless beside his ball, staring at it for what seemed an eternity. Only after one had begun to give up hope that life would ever again animate the rigid limbs, would he start his stroke. He was affectionately known on our links as The Frozen Horror.
Even in normal circumstances, a sensitive, highly-strung young man like Horace Bewstridge might well have found himself hard put to it to cope with such an antagonist. And when you take into consideration the fact that he had received those special instructions from the front office, it is not surprising that he should have failed in the opening stages of the encounter to give of his best. The fourth hole found him four down, and one had the feeling that he was lucky not to be five.
At this point, however, there occurred one of those remarkable changes of fortune which are so common in golf and which make it the undisputed king of games. Teeing up at the fifth, Sir George Copstone appeared suddenly to have become afflicted with some form of shaking palsy. Where before he had stood addressing his ball like Lot’s wife just after she had been turned into a pillar of salt, he now wriggled like an Ouled Nail dancer in the throes of colic. Nor did his condition improve as the match progressed. His movements took on an ever freer abandon. To cut a long story short, which I am told is a thing I seldom do, he lost four holes in a row, and they came to the ninth all square.
And it was here that I observed an almost equally surprising change in the demeanour of Horace Bewstridge.
Until this moment, Horace had been going through the motions with something of the weary moodiness of a Volga boatman, his face drawn, his manner listless. But now he had become a different man. As he advanced to the ninth tee, his eyes gleamed, his ears wiggled and his lips were set. He looked like a Volga boatman who has just learned that Stalin has purged his employer.
I could see what had happened. Intoxicated with this unexpected success, he was beginning to rebel against those instructions from up top. The almost religious fervour which comes upon a twenty-four handicap man when he sees a chance of winning his first cup had him in its grip. Who, he was asking himself, was R. P. Crumbles? The man who paid him his salary and could fire him out on his ear, yes, but was money everything? Suppose he won this cup and starved in the gutter, I could almost hear him murmuring, would not that be better than losing the cup and getting his three square a day?
And when on the ninth green, by pure accident, he sank a thirty-foot putt, I saw his lips move and I knew what he was saying to himself. It was the word “Excelsior.”
It was as he stood gaping at the hole into which his ball had disappeared that Sir George Copstone spoke for the first time.
“Jolly good shot, what?” said Sir George, a gallant sportsman. “Right in the old crevasse, what, what? I say, look here,” he went on, jerking his shoulders in a convulsive gesture, “do you mind if I go and shake out the underlinen? Got a beetle or something down my back.”
“Certainly,” said Horace.
“Won’t keep you long. I’ll just strip off the next-the-skins and spring upon it unawares.”
He performed another complicated writhing movement, and was about to leave us, when along came R. P. Crumbles.
“How’s it going?” asked R. P. Crumbles.
“Eh? What? Going? Oh, one down at the turn.”
“He is?”
“No, I am,” said Sir George. “He, in sharp contradistinction, is one up. Sank a dashed fine putt on this green. Thirty feet, if an inch. Well, excuse me, I’ll just buzz off and bash this beetle.”
He hastened away, twitching in every limb, and R. P. Crumbles turned to Horace. His face was suffused.
“Do I get no co-operation, Bewstridge?” he demanded. “What the devil do you mean by being one up? And what’s all this nonsense about thirty-foot putts? How dare you sink thirty-foot putts?”
I could have told him that Horace was in no way responsible for what had occurred and that the thing must be looked on as an Act of God, but I hesitated to wound the young man’s feelings, and R. P. Crumbles continued.
“Thirty-foot putts, indeed! Have you forgotten what I told you?”
Horace Bewstridge met his accusing glare without a tremor. His face was like granite. His eyes shone with a strange light.
“I have not forgotten the inter-office memo. to which you refer,” he said, in a firm, quiet voice. “But I am ignoring it. I intend to trim the pants off this stranger in our midst.”
“You do, and see what happens.”
“I don’t care what happens.”
“Bewstridge,” said R. P. Crumbles, “nine more holes remain to be played. During these nine holes, think well. I shall be waiting on the eighteenth to see the finish. I shall hope to find,” he added significantly, “that the match has ended before then.”
He walked away, and I think I have never seen the back of any head look more sinister. Horace, however, merely waved his putter defiantly, as if it had been a banner with a strange device and the other an old man recommending him not to try a pass.
“Nuts to you, R. P. Crumbles!” he cried, with a strange dignity. “Fire me, if you will. This is the only chance I shall ever have of winning a cup, and I’m going to do it.”
I stood for a moment motionless. This revelation of the nobility of this young man’s soul had stunned me. Then I hurried to where he stood, and gripped his hand. I was still shaking it, when an arch contralto voice spoke behind us.
“Good afternoon, Mr Bewstridge.”
Mrs Botts was in our midst. She was accompanied by her husband, Ponsford, her son Irwin, and her dog, Alphonse.
“How is the match going?” asked Mrs Botts.
Horace explained the position of affairs.
“We shall all be on the eighteenth green, to see the finish”, said Mrs Botts. “But you really must not beat Sir George. That would be very naughty. Where is Sir George?”
As she spoke, Sir George Copstone appeared, looking quite his old self again.
“Bashed him!” he said. “Whopping big chap. Put up the dickens of a struggle. But I settled him in the end. He’ll think twice before he tackles a Sussex Copstone again.”
Mrs Botts uttered a girlish scream.
“Somebody attacked you, Sir George?”
“I should say so. Whacking great brute of a beetle. But I fixed him.”
“You killed a beetle?”
“Well, stunned him, at any rate. Technical knockout.”
“But, Sir George, don’t you remember what Coleridge said— He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small?”
“Not beetles?”
“Of course. Some of my closest chums are beetles.”
The other seemed amazed.
“This friend of yours, this Coleridge, really says—he positively asserts that we ought to love beetles?”
“Of course.”
“Even when they get under the vest and start doing buck and wing dances along the spine?”
“Of course.”
“Sounds a bit of a silly ass to me. Not the sort of chap one would care to know. Well, come on, Bewstridge, let’s be moving, what? I say,” went on Sir George, as they passed out of earshot, “do you know that old geezer? Potty, what? Over in England, we’d have her in a padded cell before she could say ‘Pip, pip’. Beetles, egad! Coleridge, forsooth! And do you know what she said to me this morning? Told me to be careful where I stepped on the front lawn, because it was full of pixies. Can’t stand that husband of hers, either. Always talking rot about Irishmen. And what price the son and heir? There’s a young blister for you. And as for that flea storage depot she calls a dog… Well, I’ll tell you. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for, staying at her house, I’d have gone to a hotel. Carry on, Bewstridge. It’s your honour.”
It was perhaps the exhilaration due to hearing these frank criticisms of a quartette whom he had never liked, though he had striven to love them for Vera Witherby’s sake, that lent zip to Horace’s drive from the tenth tee. Normally, he was a man who alternated between a weak slice and a robust hook, but on this occasion his ball looked neither to right nor left. He pasted it straight down the middle, and with such vehemence that he had no difficulty in winning the hole and putting himself two up.
But now the tide of fortune began to change again. His recent victory over the beetle had put Sir George Copstone right back into the old mid-season form. Once more he had become the formidable Frozen Horror whose deliberate methods of play had caused three stout men to succumb before his onslaught in the preliminary rounds. With infinite caution, like one suspecting a trap of some kind, he selected clubs from his bulging bag; with unremitting concentration he addressed and struck his ball. And for a while there took place as stern a struggle as I have ever witnessed on the links.