Much shaken, he drove back to the Bingo residence, and the first thing he saw on arriving there was Bingo standing on the steps, looking bereaved to the gills.
“Freddie,” yipped Bingo, “have you seen Algernon?”
Freddie’s mind was not at its clearest.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve run across him. Algernon who? Pal of yours? Nice chap?”
Bingo hopped like the high hills.
“My baby, you ass.”
“Oh, the good old baby? Yes, I’ve got him.”
“Six hundred and fifty-seven curses!” said Bingo. “What the devil did you want to go dashing off with him for? Do you realize we’ve been hunting for him all the morning?”
“You wanted him for something special?”
“I was just going to notify the police and have dragnets spread.” Freddie could see that an apology was in order.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Still, all’s well that ends well. Here he is. Oh no, he isn’t,” he added, having made a quick inspection of the interior of the car. “I say, this is most unfortunate. I seem to have left him again.”
“Left him?”
“What with all the talk that was going on, he slipped my mind. But I can give you his address. Care of the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, St. Asaph’s, Mafeking Road, Bramley-on-Sea. All you have to do is step round at your leisure and collect him. I say, is lunch ready?”
“Lunch?” Bingo laughed a hideous, mirthless laugh. At least, that’s what Freddie thinks it was. It sounded like a bursting tire. “A fat lot of lunch you’re going to get. The cook’s got hysterics, the kitchen-maid’s got hysterics, and so have the parlourmaid and the housemaid. Rosie started having hysterics as early as eleven-thirty, and is now in bed with an ice pack. When she finds out about this, I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a million quid. Two million,” added Bingo. “Or, rather, three.”
This was an aspect of the matter which had not occurred to Freddie. He saw that there was a good deal in it.
“Do you know, Bingo,” he said, “I believe I ought to be getting back to London to-day.”
“I would.”
“Several things I’ve got to do there, several most important things. I dare say, if I whipped back to town, you could send my luggage after me?”
“A pleasure.”
“Thanks,” said Freddie. “You won’t forget the address, will you? St. Asaph’s, Mafeking Road. Mention my name, and say you’ve come for the baby I inadvertently left in the study. And now, I think, I ought to be getting round to see Mavis. She’ll be wondering what has become of me.”
He tooled off, and a few minutes later was entering the lobby of the Hotel Magnifique. The first thing he saw was Mavis and her father standing by a potted palm.
“Hullo, hullo,” he said, toddling up.
“Ah, Frederick,” said old Bodsham.
I don’t know if you remember, when I was telling you about that time in New York, my mentioning that at a rather sticky point in the proceedings Freddie had noticed that old Bodsham was looking like a codfish with something on its mind. The same conditions prevailed now.
“Frederick,” proceeded the Bod, “Mavis has been telling me a most unpleasant story.”
Freddie hardly knew what to say to this. He was just throwing a few sentences together in his mind about the modern girl being sound at heart despite her freedom of speech, and how there isn’t really any harm in it if she occasionally gets off one from the smoking room—tolerant, broad-minded stuff, if you know what I mean—when old Bodsham resumed.
“She tells me you have become entangled with a young woman with golden hair.”
“A fat young woman with golden hair,” added Mavis, specifying more exactly.
Freddie waved his arms passionately, like a semaphore.
“Nothing in it,” he cried. “Nothing whatever. The whole thing greatly exaggerated. Mavis,” he said, “I am surprised and considerably pained. I should have thought that you would have had more trust in me. Kind hearts are more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood,” he went on, for he had always remembered that gag after having to write it out two hundred times at school for loosing off a stink bomb in the form-room. “I told you she was a total stranger.”
“Then how does it happen that you were driving her through the streets of Bramley in your car this morning?” said old Bedsham.
“Yes,” said Mavis. “That is what I want to know.”
“It is a point,” said old Bodsham, “upon which we would both be glad to receive information.”
Catch Freddie at a moment like this, and you catch him at his best. His heart, leaping from its moorings, had loosened one of his front teeth, but there was absolutely nothing in his manner to indicate it. His eyes, as he stared at them, were those of a spotless bimbo cruelly wronged by a monstrous accusation.
“Me?” he said incredulously.
“You,” said old Bodsham.
“I saw you myself,” said Mavis.
I doubt if there is another member of this club who could have uttered at this juncture the light, careless laugh that Freddie did.
“What an extraordinary thing,” he said. “One can only suppose that there must be somebody in this resort who resembles me so closely in appearance that the keenest eye is deceived. I assure you, Bod—I mean, Lord Bodsham—and you, Mavis—that my morning has been far too full to permit of my giving joy rides to blondes, even if the mere thought of doing so wouldn’t have sickened me to the very soul. The idea having crossed my mind that little Wilfred would appreciate it, I went to St. Asaph’s to ask the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn to give the school a half-holiday. I want no thanks, of course. I merely mention the matter to show how ridiculous this idea of yours is that I was buzzing about with blondes in my two-seater. The Rev. Aubrey will tell you that I was in conference with him for the dickens of a time. After which, I was in conference with my friend, Bingo Little. And after that I came here.”
There was a silence.
“Odd,” said the Bod.
“Very odd,” said Mavis.
They were plainly rattled. And Freddie was just beginning to have that feeling, than which few are pleasanter, of having got away with it in the teeth of fearful odds, when the revolving door of the hotel moved as if impelled by some irresistible force, and through it came a bulging figure in mauve, surmounted by golden hair. Reading from left to right, the substantial blonde.
“Coo!” she exclaimed, sighting Freddie. “There you are, ducky! Excuse me half a jiff,” she added to Mavis and the Bod, who had rocked back on their heels at the sight of her, and she linked her arm in Freddie’s and drew him aside.
“I hadn’t time to thank you before,” she said. “Besides being too out of breath. Papa is very nippy on his feet, and it takes it out of a girl, trying to dodge a fork handle. What luck finding you here like this. My gentleman friend and I were married at the registrar’s just after I left you, and we’re having the wedding breakfast here. And if it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t have been a wedding breakfast. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
And, as if feeling that actions speak louder than words, she flung her arms about Freddie and kissed him heartily. She then buzzed off to the ladies’ room to powder her nose, leaving Freddie rooted to the spot.
He didn’t, however, remain rooted long. After one quick glance at Mavis and old Bodsham, he was off like a streak to the nearest exit. That glance, quick though it had been, had shown him that this was the end. The Bod was looking at Mavis, and Mavis was looking at the Bod. And then they both turned and looked at him, and there was that in their eyes which told him, as I say, that it was the finish. Good explainer though he is, there were some things which he knew he could not explain, and this was one of them.
That is why, if our annual tournament had been held this year at Bramley-on- Sea, you would not have found Frederick Widgeon in the ranks, playing to his handicap of twenty-four. He makes no secret of the fact that he is p
ermanently through with Bramley-on-Sea. If it wants to brace anybody, let it jolly well brace somebody else, about sums up what he feels.
CHAPTER III
Up from the Depths
AS the Oldest Member stood chaffing with his week-end guest on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, there came out of the club-house a girl of radiant beauty who, greeting the Sage cordially drew his attention to the bracelet on her shapely arm.
“Isn’t it lovely!” she said. “Ambrose gave it me for my birthday.”
She passed on, and the guest heaved a moody sigh.
“Once again!” he said. “I’ve never known it to fail. What on earth is the good of Nature turning out girls like that, seeing that before an honest man can put in his bid they have always gone and got an Ambrose attached to them? Or if not an Ambrose, a Jim or a Tim or a Fred or a Ned or a Mike or a Spike or a Percival. Sometimes I think I shall go into a monastery and get away from it all.”
“You admired my little friend?”
“She is what the doctor ordered.”
“It is odd that you should say that, for she is what the doctor got. She is the wife of our local medicine man, Ambrose Gussett.”
“I’ll bet he isn’t worthy of her.”
“On the contrary. You might say that he married beneath him. He is a scratch, she a mere painstaking eighteen. But then we must remember that until shortly before her marriage she had never touched a golf club. She was a tennis player,” said the Oldest Member, wincing. A devout golfer from the days of the gutty ball, his attitude towards exponents of the rival game had always resembled that of the early Christians towards the Ebionites.
“Well, anyway,” said the guest. “I’m glad he remembers her birthday.”
“He will always do so. That is one date which is graven on his memory in letters of brass. The time may come when in an absent-minded moment Ambrose Gussett will forget to pronate the wrists and let the club head lead, but he will never forget his wife’s birthday. And I’ll tell you why,” said the Oldest Member, securing his companion’s attention by digging him in the lower ribs with the handle of a putter.
Ambrose Gussett (the Sage proceeded) had been a member of our little community for some months before Evangeline Tewkesbury came into his life. We all liked Ambrose and wished him well. He was a pleasant clean-cut young fellow with frank blue eyes and an easy swing, and several of our Society matrons with daughters on their hands were heard to express a regret that he should remain a bachelor.
Attempts to remedy this, however, had come to nothing. Like so many young doctors with agreeable manners and frank blue eyes, Ambrose Gussett continued to be an iodoform-scented butterfly flitting from flower to flower but never resting on any individual bloom long enough to run the risk of having to sign on the dotted line.
And then Evangeline Tewkesbury arrived on a visit to her aunt, Miss Martha Tewkesbury, and he fell for her with a thud which you could have heard in the next county.
It generally happens around these parts that young men who fall in love look me up in my favourite chair on this terrace in order to obtain sympathy and advice as to how to act for the best. Ambrose Gussett was no exception. Waking from a light doze one evening, I perceived him standing before me, scratching his chin coyly with a number three iron.
“I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” said Ambrose Gussett, getting down to it without preamble. “When in her presence I note a marked cachexia. My temperature goes up, and a curious burning is accompanied by a well-marked yearning. There are floating spots before my eyes, and I am conscious of an overpowering urge to clasp her in my arms and cry ‘My mate!’”
“You are speaking of—?”
“Didn’t I mention that? Evangeline Tewkesbury.”
“Good God!”
“What do you mean?”
I felt it best to be frank.
“My dear Ambrose, I am sorry to give you pain, but Miss Tewkesbury is a tennis player. I have seen her with my own eyes leaping about the court shouting ‘Forty love,’ ‘Thirty all’ and similar obscenities.”
He astounded me by receiving my words with a careless nod.
“Yes, she told me she played tennis.”
“And you still love her?”
“Of course I still love her.”
“But, Ambrose, reflect. A golfer needs a wife, true. It is essential that he has a sympathetic listener always handy, to whom he can relate the details of the day’s play. But what sort of a life companion would a tennis player be?”
He sighed ecstatically.
“Just let me get this tennis player as a life companion, and you won’t find me beefing. I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” said Ambrose Gussett, summing up.
A few days later I found him beside my chair once more. His clean-cut face was grave.
“Say, listen,” he said. “You know that great love of mine?”
“Ah, yes. How is it coming along?”
“Not too well. Every time I call at her home, I find her festooned in tennis players.”
“Her natural mates. Female tennis players always marry male tennis players, poor souls. Abandon this mad enterprise, Ambrose,” I pleaded, “and seek for some sweet girl with a loving disposition and a low handicap.”
“I won’t. My stethoscope is still in the ring. I don’t care if these germs are her natural mates. I defy them. Whatever the odds, however sticky the going, I shall continue to do my stuff. But, as I say, the course is heavily trapped and one will need to be at the top of one’s form. Looking over the field, I think my most formidable rival is a pin-headed string bean of a fellow named Dwight Messmore. You know him?”
“By sight. She would naturally be attracted by him. I believe he is very expert at this outdoor ping-pong.”
“In the running for a place in the Davis Cup team, they tell me.”
“What is the Davis Cup team?”
“A team that plays for a sort of cup they have.”
“They have cups, do they, in the world—or sub-world—of tennis? And what are you proposing to do to foil this Davis Cup addict?”
“Ah, there you have me. I keep asking her to let me give her a golf lesson. I feel that in the pure surroundings of the practice tee her true self would come to the surface, causing her to recoil with loathing from men like Dwight Messmore. But she scoffs at the suggestion. She says golf is a footing game and she can’t understand how any except the half-witted can find pleasure in it.”
“And that appalling speech did not quench your love?”
“Of course it didn’t quench my love. A love like mine doesn’t go around getting itself quenched. But I admit that the situation is sticky, and I shall have to survey it from every angle and take steps.”
It was not until several weeks had elapsed, a period in which I had seen nothing of him, that I learned with a sickening qualm of horror how awful were the steps which he had decided to take.
He became a tennis player.
It was, of course, as I learned subsequently, not without prolonged and earnest wrestling with his conscience that a man like Ambrose Gussett, playing even then to a handicap of two and destined in the near future to be scratch, had been able to bring himself to jettison all the principles of a lifetime and plunge into the abyss. Later, when the madness had passed and he was once more hitting them sweetly off the tee, he told me that the struggle had been terrific. But in the end infatuation had proved too strong. If, he said to himself, it was necessary in order to win Evangeline Tewkesbury to become a tennis player, a tennis player he would be.
And, inquiries having informed him that the quickest way of accomplishing this degradation was to put himself in the hands of a professional, he turned up his coat collar, pulled down the brim of his hat, and snaked off to the lair where the man plied his dark trade. And presently he found himself facing a net with a racquet in his hand. Or, rather, hands, for naturally he had assumed the orthodox interlocking grip.
This led the professional to make his first criticism.
“You hold the racquet in one hand only,” he said.
Ambrose was astounded, but he was here to learn, so he followed out the instruction, and having done so peered about him, puzzled.
“Where,” he asked, “is the flag?”
“Flag?” said the professional. “But it isn’t the fourth of July.”
“I can’t shoot unless I see the flag.”
The professional was now betraying open bewilderment. He came up to the net and peered at Ambrose over it like someone inspecting a new arrival at the Zoo.
“I don’t get this about flags. We don’t use flags in tennis. Have you never played tennis? Never? Most extraordinary. Are there other games?”
“I play golf.”
“Golf? Golf? Ah, yes, of course. What they call cow-pasture pool.”
Ambrose stiffened.
“What who call cow-pasture pool?”
“All right-thinking men. Well, well, well! Well, listen,” said the professional. “It looks to me as if our best plan would be to start right at the beginning. This is a racquet. This is the net. That is what we call a ball…”
It was toward the end of the lesson that a string-bean-like young man sauntered on to the court, and the professional turned to him with the air of one seeking sympathy.
“Gentleman’s never played tennis before, Mr Messmore.
“Well, he certainly isn’t playing it now,” replied Dwight Mess-more. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,” he added, with scarcely veiled derision.
Ambrose felt the hot blood coursing in his cheeks, but all he could find to say was “Is that so?” and the lesson proceeded to its end.
It was followed by others, every morning without respite, and at long last the professional declared him competent to appear in —if one may use the term—a serious game, at the same time counselling him not to begin too ambitiously. There was a cripple he knew, said the professional, a poor fellow who had lost both legs in a motor accident, who would be about Ambrose’s form, always provided that the latter waited his opportunity and caught him on one of his off days.