But gradually Sir George secured the upper hand. Little by little he recovered the ground he had lost. He kept turning in steady sevens, and came a time when Horace began to take nines. The strain had uncovered his weak spot. His putting touch had left him.
I could see what was wrong, of course. He was being much too scientific. He was remembering the illustrated plates in the golf books and trying to make the club head move from Spot A. through Line B. to ball C. and that is always a fatal thing for a high handicap man to do. I have talked to a great many of our most successful high handicap men, and they all assured me that the only way in which it was possible to obtain results was to shut the eyes, breathe a short prayer and loose off into the unknown.
Still, there it was, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Horace went on studying the line and taking the Bobby Jones stance and all the rest of it, and gradually, as I say, Sir George recovered the ground he had lost. One down on the thirteenth, he squared the match at the fifteenth, and it was only by holing out a fortunate brassie shot to win on the seventeenth that Horace was enabled to avoid defeat by two and one. As it was, they came to the eighteenth on level terms, and everything, therefore, depended on what Fate held in store for them there.
I had a melancholy feeling that the odds were all in favour of the older man. At the time of which I am speaking, the eighteenth was not the long hole which we are looking at as we sit here, but that short, tricky one which is now the ninth—the one where you stand at the foot of the hill and pop the ball up vertically with a mashie, trusting that you will not overdrive and run across the green into the deep chasm on the other side. At such a hole, a cautious, calculating player like Sir George Copstone inevitably has the advantage over a younger and more ardent antagonist, who is apt to put too much beef behind his tee shot.
My fear, however, that Horace would fall into this error was not fulfilled. His ball soared in a perfect arc, and one could see at a glance that it must have dropped very near the pin. Sir George’s effort, though sound and scholarly, was not in the same class, and there could be no doubt that on reaching the summit we should find that he was away. And so it proved. The first thing I saw as I arrived, was a group consisting of Ponsford Botts, little Irwin Botts and the poodle, Alphonse; the second, Horace’s ball lying some two feet from the flag; the third, that of his opponent at least six feet beyond it.
Sir George, a fighter to the last, putting to within a few inches of the hole, and I heard Horace draw a deep breath.
“This for it,” he said. And, as he spoke, there was a rapid pattering of feet, and what looked like a bundle of black cotton-wool swooped past him, seized the ball in its slavering jaws and bore it away. At this crucial moment, with Horace Bewstridge’s fortunes swaying in the balance, the poodle Alphonse had got the party spirit.
The shocked “Hoy!” that sprang from my lips must have sounded to the animal like the Voice of Conscience, for he started visibly and dropped the ball. I had at least prevented him from going to the last awful extreme of carrying it down into the abyss.
But the spot where he had dropped it, was on the very edge of the green, and Horace Bewstridge stood motionless, with ashen face. Once before, in the course of this match, he had sunk a putt of this length, but he was doubting if that sort of thing happened twice in a lifetime. He would have to concentrate, concentrate. With knitted brow, he knelt down to study the lie. And, as he did so, Alphonse began to bark.
Horace rose. Almost as clearly as if he had given them verbal utterance, I could read the thoughts that were passing through his mind.
This dog, he was saying to himself, was the apple of Irwin Botts’ eye. It was also the apple of Ponsford Botts’ eye. To seek it out and kick it in the slats, therefore, would be to shoot that system of his to pieces beyond repair. Irwin Botts would look at him askance. Ponsford Botts would look at him askance. And if they looked at him askance, Vera Witherby would look at him askance, too, for they were presumably the apples of her eye, just as Alphonse was the apple of theirs.
On the other hand, he could not putt with a noise like that going on.
He made his decision. If he should lose Vera Witherby, it would be most unfortunate, but not so unfortunate as losing the President’s Cup. Horace Bewstridge, as I have said, was a golfer.
The next moment, the barking had broken off in a sharp yelp, and Alphonse was descending into the chasm like a falling star. Horace was descending into the chasm like a falling star. Horace returned to his ball, and resumed his study of the lie.
The Bottses, Irwin and Ponsford, had been stunned witnesses of the assault. They now gave tongue simultaneously.
“Hey!” cried Irwin Botts.
“Hi!” cried Ponsford Botts.
Horace frowned meditatively at the hole. Even apart from the length of it, it was a difficult shot. He would have to allow for the undulations of the green. There was a nasty little slope there to the right. That must be taken into consideration. There was also, further on, a nasty little slope to the left. The thing called for profound thought, and for some reason he found himself unable to give his whole mind to the problem.
Then he saw what the trouble was. Irwin Botts was standing beside him, shouting “Hey!” in his left ear, and Ponsford Botts was standing on the other side, shouting “Hi!” in his right ear. It was this that was affecting his concentration.
He gazed at them, momentarily at a loss. How, he asked himself, would Bobby Jones have handled a situation like this? The answer came in a flash. He would have taken Irwin Botts by the scruff of his neck, led him to the brink of the chasm and kicked him into it. He would then have come back for Ponsford Botts.
Horace did this, and resumed the scrutiny of the lie. And at this moment, accompanied by a pretty, soulful-looking girl in whom I recognized Vera Witherby, R. P. Crumbles came on to the green. As his eye fell on Horace, his face darkened. He asked Sir George Copstone how the match stood.
“I should have thought,” he said, chewing his cigar ominously, “that it would have been over long before this. I had supposed that you would have won on about the fifteenth or sixteenth.”
“It is a point verging very decidedly on the moot,” replied Sir George, “if I’m going to win on the eighteenth. He’s got this for it, and I expect him to sink it, now that there’s nothing to distract his mind. He was being a bit bothered a moment ago,” he explained, “by Botts senior, Botts junior and the Botts dog. But he has just kicked them all into the chasm, and can now give his whole attention to the game. Capable young feller, that. Just holed out a two hundred yard brassie shot. Judged it to a nicety.”
I heard Vera Witherby draw in her breath sharply. R. P. Crumbles, switching his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, strode across to where Horace was bending over his ball, and spoke rapidly and forcefully.
It was a dangerous thing to do, and one against which his best friends would have advised him. There was no “Yes, Mr Crumbles”, “No, Mr Crumbles” about Horace Bewstridge now. I saw him straighten him with a testy frown. The next moment, he had attached himself to the scruff of the other’s neck and was adding him to the contents of the chasm.
This done, he returned, took another look at the hole with his head on one side, and seemed satisfied. He rose, and addressed his ball. He was drawing the club head back, when a sudden scream rent the air. Glancing over his shoulder, exasperated, he saw that their little group had been joined by Mrs Botts. She was bending over the edge of the chasm, endeavouring to establish communication with its inmates. Muffled voices rose from the depths.
“Ponsford!”
“Wah, wah, wah.”
“Mr Crumbles!”
“Wah, wah, wah.”
“Irwin!”
“Wah, wah, wah.”
“Alphonse!”
“Woof, woof, woof.”
Mrs Botts bent still further forward, one hand resting on the turf, the other cupped to her ear.
“What? What did y
ou say? I can’t hear. What are you doing down there? What? I can’t hear. What is Mr Crumbles doing down there? Why has he got his foot in Irwin’s eye? Irwin, take your eye away from Mr Crumbles’ foot immediately. What? I can’t hear. Tell whom he is fired, Mr Crumbles? I can’t hear. Why is Alphonse biting Mr Crumbles in the leg? What? I can’t hear. I wish you would speak plainly. Your mouth’s full of what? Ham? Oh, sand? Why is your mouth full of sand? Why is Alphonse now biting Irwin? Skin whom, Mr Crumbles? What? I can’t hear. You’ve swallowed your cigar? Why? What? I can’t hear.”
It seemed to Horace Bewstridge, that this sort of thing, unless firmly checked at the source, might go on indefinitely. And to attempt to concentrate while it did, was hopeless. Clicking his tongue in annoyance at these incessant interruptions, he stepped across to where Mrs Botts crouched. There was a sound like a pistol shot. Mrs Botts joined the others. Horace came back, rubbing his hand, studied the line again and took his stance.
“Mr Bewstridge!”
The words, spoken in his left ear just as he was shooting, were little more than a whisper, but they affected Horace as if an ammunition dump had exploded beneath him. Until this moment, he had evidently been unaware of the presence of the girl he loved, and this unexpected announcement of it caused him to putt rather strongly.
His club descended with a convulsive jerk, and the ball, as if feeling that now that all that scientific nonsense was over, it knew where it was, started off for the hole at forty miles an hour in a dead straight line. There were slopes to the right. There were slopes to the left. It ignored them. Sizzling over the turf, it struck the back of the cup, soared into the air like a rocket, came down, soared up again, fell once more bounced and rebounced and finally, after rattling round and round for perhaps a quarter of a minute, rested safe at journey’s end. The struggle for the President’s Cup was over.
“Nice work,” said Sir George Copstone. “Your match, what?” Horace was gazing at Vera Witherby.
“You spoke?” he said.
She blushed in pretty confusion.
“It was nothing. I only wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me?”
“For what you did to Aunt Lavender.”
“Me, too,” said Sir George Copstone, who had joined them.
“Precisely what the woman needed. Should be a turning point in her life. That’ll take her mind off pixies for a bit. And beetles.”
Horace stared at the girl. He had thought to see her shrink from him in loathing. Instead of which, she was looking at him with something in her eyes which, if he was not very much mistaken, was the love light.
“Vera… Do you mean…?”
Her eyes must have given him his answer, for he sprang forward and clasped her to his bosom, using the interlocking grip. She nestled in his arms.
“I misjudged you, Horace,” she whispered. “I thought you were a sap. I mistrusted anyone who could be as fond as you seemed to be of Aunt Lavender, Uncle Ponsford, little Irwin and Alphonse. And I had always yearned for one of those engagements where my man, like Romeo, would run fearful risks to come near me, and I would have to communicate with him by means of notes in hollow trees.”
“Romantic,” explained Sir George. “Many girls are.”
Into the ecstasy of Horace Bewstridge’s mood there crept a chilling thought. He had won her love. He had won the President’s Cup. But, unless he had quite misinterpreted the recent exchange of remarks between Mrs Botts and R. P. Crumbles at the chasm side, he had lost his job and so far from being able to support a wife, would now presumably have to starve in the gutter.
He explained this, and Sir George Copstone pooh-poohed vehemently.
“Starve in the gutter? Never heard such bally rot. What do you want to go starving in gutters for? Join me, what? Come over to England, I mean to say, and accept a prominent position in my chain of dashed stores. Name your own salary, of course.”
Horace reeled.
“You don’t mean that?”
“Of course I mean it. What do you think I meant? What other possible construction could you have put on my words?”
“But you don’t know what I can do.”
Sir George stared.
“Not know what you can do? Why, I’ve seen you in action, dash it. If what you have just done isn’t enough to give a discerning man an idea of your capabilities, I’d like to know what is. Ever since I went to stay at that house, I’ve wanted to find someone capable of kicking that dog, kicking that boy, kicking old Botts and giving Ma Botts a juicy one right on the good old spot. I’m not merely grateful to you, my dear chap, profoundly grateful, I’m overcome with admiration. Enormously impressed, I am. Never saw anything so adroit. What I need in my business is a man who thinks on his feet and does it now. Ginger up some of my branch managers a bit. Of course, you must join me, dear old thing, and don’t forget about making the salary big. And now that’s settled, how about trickling off to the bar and having a few? Yoicks!”
“Yoicks!” said Horace.
“Yoicks!” said Vera Witherby.
“Tallo-ho!” said Sir George.
“Tallo-ho!” said Horace.
“Tally-ho!” said Vera Witherby.
“Tally-bally-ho!” said Sir George, driving the thing home beyond any possibility of misunderstanding. “Come on, let’s go.”
CHAPTER VI
Rodney has a Relapse
THE Oldest Member, who had been in a reverie, came out of it abruptly and began to speak with the practised ease of a raconteur who does not require a cue to start him off on a story. When William Bates came to me that afternoon with his tragic story (said the Oldest Member, as smoothly as if we had been discussing William Bates, whoever he might be, for hours), I felt no surprise that he should have selected me as a confident. I have been sitting on the terrace of this golf club long enough to know that that is what I am there for. Everybody with a bit of bad news always brings it to me.
“I say,” said William Bates.
This William was a substantial young man constructed rather on the lines of a lorry, and as a rule he shared that vehicle’s placid and unruffled outlook on life. He lived mainly on chops and beer, and few things were able to disturb him. Yet, as he stood before me now, I could see that he was all of a twitter, as far as a fourteen-stone-six man full of beer and chops can be all of a twitter.
“I say,” said William. “You know Rodney?”
“Your brother-in-law, Rodney Spelvin?”
“Yes. I believe he’s gone cuckoo.”
“What gives you that impression?”
“Well, look. Listen to this. We were playing our usual foursome this morning, Rodney and Anastatia and me and Jane, a bob a corner, nip and tuck all the way around, and at the eighteenth Jane and I were lying dead in four and Rodney had a simple chip to reach the green in three. You get the set-up?”
I said I got the set-up.
“Well, knowing my sister Anastatia’s uncanny ability to hole out from anywhere within fifteen yards of the pin, I naturally thought the thing was in the bag for them. I said as much to Jane. ‘Jane,’ I said, ‘be ready with the stiff upper lip. They’ve dished us.’ And I had already started to feel in my pocket for my bob, when I suddenly saw that Rodney was picking up his ball.”
“Picking up his ball?”
“And what do you think his explanation was? His explanation was that in order to make his shot he would have had to crush a daisy. ‘I couldn’t crush a daisy,’ he said. ‘The pixies would never forgive me.’ What do you make of it?”
I knew what I made of it, but I had not the heart to tell him. I passed it off by saying that Rodney was one of those genial clowns who will do anything for a laugh and, William being a simple soul, my efforts to soothe him were successful. But his story had left me uneasy and apprehensive. It seemed to me only too certain that Rodney Spelvin was in for another attack of poetry.
I have generally found, as I have gone through the world, that people are tolerant a
nd ready to forgive, and in our little community it was never held against Rodney Spelvin that he had once been a poet and a very virulent one, too; the sort of man who would produce a slim volume of verse bound in squashy mauve leather at the drop of the hat, mostly on the subject of sunsets and pixies. He had said good-bye to all that directly he took up golf and announced his betrothal to William’s sister Anastatia.
It was golf and the love of a good woman that saved Rodney Spelvin. The moment he had bought his bag of clubs and signed up Anastatia Bates as a partner for life’s medal round, he was a different man. He now wrote mystery thrillers, and with such success that he and Anastatia and their child Timothy were enabled to live like fighting cocks. It was impossible not to be thrilled by Rodney Spelvin, and so skilful was the technique which he had developed that he was soon able to push out his couple of thousand words of wholesome blood-stained fiction each morning before breakfast, leaving the rest of the day for the normal fifty-four holes of golf.
At golf, too, he made steady progress. His wife, a scratch player who had once won the Ladies’ Championship, guided him with loving care, and it was not long before he became a skilful twenty-one and was regarded in several knowledgeable quarters as a man to keep your eye on for the Rabbits Umbrella, a local competition open to those with a handicap of eighteen or over.
But smooth though the putting green of Anastatia Spelvin’s happiness was to the casual glance, there lurked on it, I knew, a secret worm-cast. She could never forget that the man she loved was a man with a past. Deep down in her soul there was always the corroding fear lest at any moment a particularly fine sunset or the sight of a rose in bud might undo all the work she had done, sending Rodney hot-foot once more to this Theasaurus and rhyming dictionary. It was for this reason that she always hurried him indoors when the sun began to go down and refused to have rose trees in her garden. She was in the same position as a wife who has married a once heavy drinker and, though tolerably certain that he has reformed, nevertheless feels it prudent to tear out the whisky advertisements before giving him his Tatler.