Her doubts vanished. Her faith in him was once more firm. It was as if a heavy load had rolled off her heart. Playing her second, a brassie shot, she uncorked such a snorter that a few moments later she found herself one up again.
As for Captain Jack Fosdyke, he was fully occupied with trying to keep the rain from going down the back of his neck and reminding himself that Agnes was the only niece of Josiah Flack, a man who had a deep sense of family obligations, more money than you could shake a stick at and one foot in the grave.
Whether or not Agnes’s opponent was actually a schoolmistress, I do not know. But if she was, the juvenile education of this country is in good hands. In a crisis where a weaker woman might have wilted—one down and five to play—she remained firm and undaunted. Her hat was a frightful object, but it was still in the ring. She fought Agnes, hole after hole, with indomitable tenacity. The fourteenth and fifteenth she halved, but at the sixteenth she produced another of those inspired iron shots and the match was squared. And, going from strength to strength, she won the seventeenth with a twenty-foot putt.
“Dormy one,” she said, speaking for the first time.
It is always a mistake to chatter on the links. It disturbs the concentration. To this burst of speech I attribute the fact that the schoolmistress’s tee shot at the eighteenth was so markedly inferior to its predecessors. The eighteenth was a short hole ending just outside the club-house and even rabbits seldom failed to make the green. But she fell short by some yards, and Agnes, judging the distance perfectly, was on and near the pin. The schoolmistress chipped so successfully with her second that it seemed for an instant that she was about to hole out. But the ball stopped a few inches from its destination, and Agnes, with a three-foot putt for a two, felt her heart leap up like that of the poet Wordsworth when he saw a rainbow. She had not missed more than one three-foot putt a year since her kindergarten days.
It was at this moment that there emerged from the chub-house where it had been having a saucer of tea and a slice of cake, a Pekinese dog of hard-boiled aspect. It strolled on to the green, and approaching Agnes’s ball subjected it to a pop-eyed scrutiny.
There is a vein of eccentricity in all Pekes. Here, one would have said, was a ball with little about it to arrest the attention of a thoughtful dog. It was just a regulation blue dot, slightly battered. Yet it was obvious immediately that it had touched a chord. The animal sniffed at it with every evidence of interest and pleasure. It patted it with its paw. It smelled it. Then, lying down, it took it in its mouth and began to chew meditatively.
To Agnes the mere spectacle of a dog on a green had been a thing of horror. Brought up from childhood to reverence the rules of Greens Committees, she had shuddered violently from head to foot. Recovering herself with a powerful effort, she advanced and said ‘Shoo!’ The Peke rolled its eyes sideways, inspected her, dismissed her as of no importance or entertainment value, and resumed its fletcherizing. Agnes advanced another step, and the schoolmistress for the second time broke her Trappist vows.
“You can’t move that dog,” she said. “It’s a hazard.”
“Nonsense.”
“I beg your pardon, it is. If you get into casual water, you don’t mop it up with a brush and pail, do you? Certainly you don’t. You play out of it. Same thing when you get into a casual dog.”
They train these schoolmistresses to reason clearly. Agnes halted, baffled. Then her eye fell on Captain Jack Fosdyke, and she saw the way out.
“There’s nothing in the rules to prevent a spectator, meeting a dog on the course, from picking it up and fondling it.”
It was the schoolmistress’ turn to be baffled. She bit her lip in chagrined silence.
“Jack, dear,” said Agnes, “pick up that dog and fondle it. And,” she added, for she was a quick-thinking girl, “when doing so, hold its head over the hole.”
It was a behest which one might have supposed that any knight, eager to win his lady’s favour, would have leaped to fulfil. But Captain Jack Fosdyke did not leap. There was a dubious look on his handsome face, and he scratched his chin pensively.
“Just a moment,” he said. “This is a thing you want to look at from every angle. Pekes are awfully nippy, you know. They make sudden darts at your ankles.”
“Well, you like a spice of danger.”
“Within reason, dear lady, within reason.”
“You once killed a lion with a sardine opener.”
“Ah, but I first quelled him with the power of the human eye. The trouble with Pekes is, they’re so short-sighted, they can’t see the human eye, so you can’t quell them with it.”
“You could if you put your face right down close.”
“If,” said Captain Jack Fosdyke thoughtfully.
Agnes gasped. Already this afternoon she had had occasion to stare at this man. She now stared again.
“Are you afraid of a dog?”
He gave a light laugh.
“Afraid of dogs? That would amuse the boys at Buckingham Palace, if they could hear it. They know what a daredevil I was in the old days when I was Deputy Master of the Royal Buck-hounds. I remember one morning coming down to the kennels with my whistle and my bag of dog biscuits and finding one of the personnel in rather an edgy mood. I spoke to it soothingly— ‘Fido, Fido, good boy, Fido!’—but it merely bared its teeth and snarled, and I saw that it was about to spring. There wasn’t a moment to lose. By a bit of luck the Bluemantle Pursuivant at Arms had happened to leave his blue mantle hanging over the back of a chair. I snatched it up and flung it over the animal’s head, after which it was a simple task to secure it with stout cords and put on its muzzle. There was a good deal of comment on my adroitness. Lord Slythe and Sayle, who was present, I remember, said to Lord Knubble of Knopp, who was also present, that he hadn’t seen anything so resourceful since the day when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster rang in a bad half-crown on the First Gold Stick in Waiting.”
It was the sort of story which in happier days had held Agnes Flack enthralled, but now it merely added to her depression and disillusionment. She made a last appeal to his better feelings.
“But, Jack, if you don’t shift this beastly little object, I shall lose the match.”
“Well, what does that matter, dear child? A mere tiddly seaside competition.”
Agnes had heard enough. Her eyes were stony.
“You refuse? Then our engagement is at an end.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“I do say that.”
It was plain that a struggle was proceeding in Captain Jack Fosdyke’s soul, or what one may loosely call his soul. He was thinking how rich Josiah Flack was, how fond of his niece, and how frail. On the other hand, the Peke, now suspecting a plot against its well-being, had bared a small but serviceable tooth at the corner of its mouth. The whole situation was very difficult.
As he stood there at a man’s cross-roads, there came out of the club—house, smoking a cigarette in a sixteen—inch holder, an expensively upholstered girl with platinum hair and vermilion finger-nails. She bent and picked the Peke up.
“My little angel would appear to be interfering with your hockey-knocking,” she said. “Why, hello, Captain Fosdyke. You here? Come along in and give me a cocktail.”
She kissed the Peke lovingly on the top of its head and carried it into the club-house. The ball went with them.
“She’s gone into the bar,” said the schoolmistress. “You’ll have to chip out from there. Difficult shot. I’d use a niblick.”
Captain Jack Fosdyke was gazing after the girl, a puzzled wrinkle on his forehead.
“I’ve met her before somewhere, but I can’t place her. Who is she?”
“One of the idle rich,” said the schoolmistress, sniffing. Her views were Socialistic.
Captain Jack Fosdyke started.
“Idle rich?”
“That’s Lulabelle Sprockett, the Sprockett’s Superfine Sardine heiress. She’s worth a hundred million in her
own right.”
“In her own right? You mean she’s actually got the stuff in the bank, where she can lay hands on it whenever she feels disposed? Good God!” cried Captain Jack Fosdyke. “Bless my soul! Well, well, well, well, well!” He turned to Agnes. “Did I hear you mention something about breaking our engagement? Right ho, dear lady, right ho. Just as you say. Nice to have known you. I shall watch your future career with considerable interest. Excuse me,” said Captain Jack Fosdyke.
There was a whirring sound, and he disappeared into the clubhouse.
“I concede the match,” said Agnes dully.
“Might just as well,” said the schoolmistress.
Agnes Flack stood on the eighteenth green, contemplating the ruin of her life. It was not the loss of Captain Jack Fosdyke that was making her mourn, for the scales had fallen from her eyes. He had shown himself totally lacking in the golfing spirit, and infatuation was dead. What did jar her was that she had lost Sidney McMurdo. In this dark hour all the old love had come sweeping back into her soul like a tidal wave.
Had she been mad to sever their relations?
The answer to that was “Certainly”.
Had she, like a child breaking up a Noah’s Ark with a tack hammer, deliberately sabotaged her hopes and happiness?
The reply to that was “Quite”.
Would she ever see him again?
In the space allotted to this question she could pencil in the word “Undoubtedly,” for he was even now coming out of the locker-room entrance.
“Sidney!” she cried.
He seemed depressed. His colossal shoulders were drooping, and his eyes were those of a man who has drunk the wine of life to the lees.
“Oh, hello,” he said. There was a silence.
“How did Mrs Spottsworth come out?” asked Agnes. “Eh? Oh, she won.”
Agnes’s depression hit a new low. There was another silence.
“She has broken the engagement,” said Sidney.
The rain was still sluicing down with undiminished intensity, but it seemed to Agnes Flack, as she heard these words, that a blaze of golden sunshine had suddenly lit up the East Bampton golf course.
“She wanted to quit because of the rain,” went on Sidney, in a low, toneless voice. “I took her by the ear and led her round, standing over her with upraised hand as she made her shots, ready to let her have a juicy one if she faltered. On one or two occasions I was obliged to do so. By these means I steered her through to victory, but she didn’t like it. Having holed out on the eighteenth for a nice three, which gave her the match, she told me that I had completely changed since those days on the Nile and that she never wished to see or speak to me again in this or any other incarnation.”
Agnes was gulping like one of those peculiar fish you catch down in Florida.
“Then you are free?”
“And glad of it. What I ever saw in the woman beats me. But what good is that, when I have lost you?”
“But you haven’t.”
“Pardon me. What about your Fosdyke?”
“I’ve just broken my engagement, too. Oh, Sidney, let’s go right off and get married under an arch of niblicks before we make any more of these unfortunate mistakes. Let me tell you how that Fosdyke false alarm behaved.”
In molten words she began to relate her story, but she had not proceeded far when she was obliged to stop, for Sidney McMurdo’s strong arms were about her and he was crushing her to his bosom. And when Sidney McMurdo crushed girls to his bosom, they had to save their breath for breathing purposes, inhaling and exhaling when and if they could.
CHAPTER V
Excelsior
ALFRED JUKES and Wilberforce Bream had just holed out at the end of their match for the club championship, the latter sinking a long putt to win, and the young man sitting with the Oldest Member on the terrace overlooking the eighteenth green said that though this meant a loss to his privy purse often dollars, his confidence in Jukes remained unimpaired. He still considered him a better golfer than Bream.
The Sage nodded without much enthusiasm.
“You may be right,” he agreed. “But I would not call either of them a good golfer.”
“They’re both scratch.”
“True. But it is not mere technical skill that makes a man a good golfer, it is the golfing soul. These two have not the proper attitude of seriousness towards the game. Jukes once returned to the club-house in the middle of a round because there was a thunderstorm and his caddie got struck by lightning, and I have known Bream to concede a hole for the almost frivolous reason that he had sliced his ball into a hornet’s nest and was reluctant to play it where it lay. This was not the Bewstridge spirit.”
“The what spirit?”
“The spirit that animated Horace Bewstridge, the finest golfer I have ever known.”
“Was he scratch?”
“Far from it. His handicap was twenty-four. But though his ball was seldom in the right place, his heart was. When I think what Horace Bewstridge went through that day he battled for the President’s Cup, I am reminded of the poem, Excelsior, by the late Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with which you are doubtless familiar.”
“I used to recite it as a child.”
“I am sorry I missed the treat,” said the Oldest Member courteously. “Then you will recall how its hero, in his struggle to reach the heights, was laid stymie after stymie, and how in order to achieve his aim, he had to give up all idea of resting his head upon the maiden’s breast, though cordially invited to do so. A tear, if you remember, stood in his bright blue eye, but with a brief ‘Excelsior!’ he intimated that no business could result. Virtually the same thing that happened to Horace Bewstridge.”
“You know,” said the young man, “I’ve always thought that Excelsior bird a bit of a fathead. I mean to say, what was there in it for him? As far as I can make out, just the walk.”
“Suppose he had been trying to win his first cup?”
“I don’t recollect anything being said about any cup. Do they give cups for climbing mountains ‘mid snow and ice?”
“We are getting a little muddled,” said the Oldest Member. “You appear to be discussing the youth with the banner and the clarion voice, while I am talking about Horace Bewstridge. It may serve to clear the air and disperse the fog of misunderstanding if I tell you the latter’s story. And in order that you shall miss none of the finer shades, I must begin by dwelling upon his great love for Vera Witherby.”
It was only after the thing had been going on for some time (said the Oldest Member) that I learned of this secret romance in Horace’s life. As a rule, the Romeos who live about here are not backward in confiding in me when they fall in love. Indeed, I sometimes feel that I shall have to begin keeping them off with a stick. But Bewstridge was reticent. It was purely by chance that I became aware of his passion.
One rather breezy morning, I was sitting almost exactly where we are sitting now, thinking of this and that, when I observed fluttering towards me across the terrace a sheet of paper. It stopped against my foot, and I picked it up and read its contents. They ran as follows:—
MEM
OLD B. Ribs. But watch eyes.
MA B. Bone up on pixies. Flowers. Insects.
I. Symp. breeziness.
A. Concil. If poss. p., but w.o. for s.d.a.
That was all, and I studied it with close attention and, I must confess, a certain amount of alarm. There had been a number of atom-bomb spy scares in the papers recently, and it occurred to me that this might be a secret code, possibly containing information about some local atoms.
It was then that I saw Horace Bewstridge hurrying towards me. He appeared agitated.
“Have you seen a piece of paper?” he asked.
“Would this be it?”
He took it, and seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“I suppose you’re wondering what it’s all about?”
I admitted to a certain curiosity, and he hesitated again. Then t
here crept into his eyes the look which I have seen so often in the eyes of young men. I saw that he was about to confide in me. And presently out it all came, like beer from a bottle. He was in love with Vera Witherby, the niece of one Ponsford Botts, a resident in the neighbourhood.
In putting it like that, I am giving you the thing in condensed form, confining myself to the gist. Horace Bewstridge was a little long-winded about it all, going rather deeply into his emotions and speaking at some length about her eyes, which he compared to twin stars. It was several minutes before I was able to enquire how he was making out.
“Have you told your love?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Horace Bewstridge. “I goggle a good deal, but for the present am content to leave it at that. You see, I’m working this thing on a system. All the nibs will tell you that everything is done by propaganda nowadays, and that your first move, if you want to get anywhere, must be to rope in a bloc of friendly neutrals. I start, accordingly, by making myself solid with the family. I give them the old salve, get them rooting for me, and thus ensure an impressive build-up. Only then do I take direct action and edge into what you might call the blitzkrieg. This paper contains notes for my guidance.”
“With reference to administering the salve?”
“Exactly.”
I took the document from him, and glanced at it again.
“What,” I asked, “does ‘Old B. Ribs. But watch eyes’ signify?”
“Quite simple. Old Botts tells dialect stories about Irishmen named Pat and Mike, and you laugh when he prods you in the ribs. But sometimes he doesn’t prod you in the ribs, merely stands there looking pop-eyed. One has to be careful about that.”
“Under the heading ‘Ma B.’, I see you say: ‘Bone up on pixies.’ You add the words ‘flowers’ and insects.”