But it was with no cripple that Ambrose Gusset made his first appearance. With incredible audacity he sought out Evangeline Tewkesbury and asked her for a game.
The fixture came off next day before an audience consisting of Dwight Messmore, who, though Ambrose gave him every opportunity of remembering another engagement elsewhere, remained on the side lines throughout, convulsed with merriment and uttering, in Ambrose’s opinion, far more catcalls than were necessary. Having learned that morning that he had been selected to play in the Davis Cup team, whatever that may be, the man was thoroughly above himself. As early as the middle of the first set he was drawing audible comparisons between Ambrose and a cat on hot bricks, seeming to feel that the palm for gracefulness should be awarded to the latter.
When the game was over—6—0, 6—0—Ambrose inquired of Evangeline if she thought he would ever be a good tennis player. The girl gave him a curious look and asked if he had read any nice books lately. Ambrose mentioned a few, and she said that she had enjoyed them, too, and wondered how authors managed to think up these things. She was starting to touch on the new plays, when Ambrose, bluntly bringing up once more a subject which he had a feeling that she was evading, repeated his question.
Again the girl seemed to hesitate, and it was Dwight Messmore who took upon himself the onus of reply, sticking his oar in with insufferable heartiness.
“The problem which you have propounded, my dear fellow,” he said, “is one which it is not easy to answer. A ‘good’ tennis player, you say. Well, I feel sure that you will always be a moral tennis player, a virtuous, upright tennis player, but if you wish to know whether I think you will ever be able to make a game of it with a child of six, I reply No. Abandon all hope of reaching such heights. Console yourself with the reflection that you have great entertainment value. You are what I should call an amusing tennis player, a tennis player who will always be good for a laugh from the most discriminating audience. I can vouch for this, for I have been filming you from time to time with my ciné-kodak, and whenever I have run the result off at parties it has been the success of the evening. My friends are hard critics, not easy to please, but you have won them. ‘Show us Ambrose Gussett playing tennis,’ is their cry, and when I do so they guffaw till their eyes bubble.”
And scooping Evangeline up he led her off, leaving Ambrose, as you may well imagine, a prey to the most violent and disturbing emotions. If a patient had described to him the symptoms which he was experiencing, he would have ordered him cold compresses and a milk diet.
You will have no difficulty in guessing for yourself the trend his thoughts were taking. He was a doctor, and a doctor is peculiarly situated. He must be a dignified, venerable figure, to whom patients can show their tongues without secret misgivings as to his ability to read their message. And Ambrose, recalling some of his recent activities, could not but feel that a ciné-kodak record of these must lower, if not absolutely destroy, his prestige.
One moment in particular stood out in his memory, when in a fruitless effort to reach and return one of Evangeline’s testing drives he had got his left foot entangled with his right elbow and had rolled over and over like a shot rabbit, eventually coming to rest with his head between his legs. Such a picture, exhibited to anything like a wide audience, might well ruin his practice irretrievably.
He woke from a troubled sleep next morning filled with a stern resolve. He had decided to confront Dwight Messmore and demand that film from him. So after a light breakfast he got in his car and drove to the other’s residence. Alighting at the door with tight lip and a set face, he beat a sharp tattoo on it with the knocker. And simultaneously there came from within a loud cry, almost a scream, if not a shriek. The next moment the door opened, and Dwight Messmore stood before him.
“Holy smoke!” said Dwight Messmore. “I thought it was an atom bomb.”
It was plain to Ambrose’s experienced eye that the man was not in his customary vigorous health. He was wearing about his forehead a towel which appeared to have ice in it, and his complexion was a curious greenish yellow.
“Come in,” said Dwight Messmore, speaking in a hollow, husky voice, like a spirit at a séance. “I was just going to send for you. Walk on tip-toe, do you mind, and speak very softly. I am on the point of expiring.”
As he led the way into the living-room, shuffling along like a Volga boatman, a genial voice with a rather nasal intonation cried “Hello!”, and Ambrose perceived a handsome parrot in a cage on the table.
“I didn’t know you had a parrot,” he said.
“I didn’t know it myself till this morning,” said Dwight Mess-more. “It suddenly arrived out of the unknown. A man in a sweater came in a van and left it. He insisted that I had ordered it. Damn fool. Do I look like a man who orders parrots?”
“Ko-ko,” observed the bird, which for some moments had taken no part in the conversation.
“Cocoa!” whispered Dwight Messmore with a powerful shudder. “At a moment like this!”
He lowered himself into a chair, and Ambrose gently placed a thermometer in his mouth.
“Can we think of anything that can have caused this little indisposition?” he asked.
“Charcoal poisoning,” said Dwight Messmore promptly. “I gave a little party last night to a few fellows to celebrate my making the Davis Cup team—”
“Did we drink anything?”
“Not a thing. Well, just a bottle or two of champagne, and liqueurs… brandy, chartreuse, benedictine, curaçao, crème de menthe, kummel and so forth… and of course whisky. But nothing more. It was practically a teetotal evening. No, what did the trick was that charcoal. As you are probably aware, the stuff they sell you as caviare in this country isn’t caviare. It’s whitefish roe, and they colour it with powdered charcoal. Well, you can’t sit up half the night eating powdered charcoal without paying the penalty.”
“Quite,” said Ambrose. “Well, I think our best plan will be to remain perfectly quiet with our eyes closed, and presently I will send us a little sedative.”
“Have a nut,” suggested the parrot.
“No nuts, of course,” said Ambrose.
It was only after Ambrose had returned to his car and was driving off to the Tewkesbury home in the hope of seeing Evangeline that it occurred to him that he had forgotten all about that film. Feeling, however, that there would be plenty of time to collect that later, he fetched up at chez Tewkesbury and was informed by Miss Martha that Evangeline was out.
“She’s upset to-day,” said the adored object’s aunt. “Not ill, just in a temper. She’s gone for a walk. She said it might make her feel better. She is very angry because nobody has remembered her birthday.”
Ambrose reeled. He had not remembered it himself. How he had come to allow so vital a date to slip his mind, he was at a loss to understand. He could only suppose that the strain of learning tennis had sapped his intellect.
“She is particularly annoyed,” proceeded Miss Tewkesbury, “with Mr Messmore. She is passionately fond of birds, and Mr Messmore faithfully promised her a parrot for her birthday. Her birthday arrives, and what happens? No parrot.”
She was going on to speak further, but Ambrose was no longer there. With a brief “Excuse me” he had shot from her presence as if Walter Hagen in his prime had driven him off the tee. His alert mind had seen the way.
Once again his knock on Dwight Messmore’s door produced that loud cry that was almost a scream, if not a shriek. And once again the invalid presented himself, looking like a full page illustration from a medical treatise on bubonic plague.
“Ye gods!” he moaned. “Must you? Rap, rap, rap. Tap, tap, tap. Are you a doctor or a woodpecker?”
“Listen,” said Ambrose. He had no time for these unmanly complaints. “It just occurred to me. We need perfect relaxation and repose, and we cannot enjoy perfect relaxation and repose if we are consistently hampered by parrots. I will take the bird off our hands.”
Although one would have sai
d that such a thing was impossible, the look that came into Dwight Messmore’s pea-green face made it seem almost beautiful.
“You will? You really will? Then heaven bless you, you Boy Scout of a physician! Take this bird, Gusset, and my blessing with it. Maybe in the days to come when acquaintance has ripened into friendship and it feels justified in becoming confidential, it will reveal to you what it is that it expects people to have seen by the dawn’s early light. So far it has maintained a complete reserve on the point. It just says ‘Oh, say have you seen by the dawn’s early light?’ and then stops and makes a noise like someone drawing a cork. After a brief interval for mental refreshment it then starts all over again at the beginning. Gosh!” said Dwight Messmore, having struggled with his emotion for a while. “It’s lucky you came along, you United States marine! I was very near the breaking point, very near. And, by the way,” he proceeded, “as a fitting expression of my gratitude I am going to destroy those films I took of you playing—I use the word loosely —tennis. I feel that it is the least I can do. ‘Oh, say have you seen by the dawn’s early light?’ it says, and then the popping noise. Be prepared for this. Well, I will now take a short and, I anticipate, refreshing nap. Good-bye, Gussett. Don’t forget your parrot.”
It was with a light heart that Ambrose returned to his car, dangling the cage on a carefree finger. And it was with a still lighter heart that, as he rounded a corner, he saw Evangeline coming along at a quick heal-and-toe. Her brow, he noticed, was overcast and her lips tightly set, but these were symptoms which he hoped very shortly to treat and correct.
Evangeline Tewkesbury was, indeed, in no sunny frame of mind. A queen accustomed to the homage of her little court, she could have betted her Sunday cami-knickers that her birthday would have found her snowed under with parcels and flowers, the gift of adoring males of her entourage, and she had imagined that on this important morning her telephone would never have stopped ringing. Instead of which, no parcels, no flowers, and out of the telephone not a yip. She might have been celebrating her birthday on some lonely atoll in the South Seas.
Could she have known that every male friend on her list was suffering, like Dwight Messmore, from too lavish indulgence in whitefish roe powdered with charcoal, she might have understood and forgiven. But she did not know, and so missed understanding and forgiveness by several parasangs. Her only feeling towards these faithless wooers was a well-marked urge to skin them all with a blunt knife and dance on the remains.
“Good morning, Miss Tewkesbury,” cried Ambrose gaily. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Many happy returns of the day. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, in short. I have a little present here which I hope you will accept. Just a trivial parrot, but you may be able to fit it in somewhere.”
And, encouraged by the sudden softening of her eyes, he parked the car, stood on one leg and asked her to be his wife.
When he had finished, she stood silent for a space, and a close observer would have seen that a struggle was proceeding in her mind. She was weighing the pros and cons.
She had always liked Ambrose and admired his clean-cut good looks. And the fact that he had remembered her birthday argued that he was kind, courteous and considerate; of the stuff, in short, of which good husbands are made. For a while the word “Yes” seemed to be trembling on her lips.
And then, chillingly, there came into her mind the picture of this man as he had appeared on the tennis court. Could she, she asked herself, link her lot with that of such a super-rabbit? There rose before her a vision of that awful moment when Ambrose had got his left foot entangled with his right elbow.
“No, no, a thousand times no,” she told herself. Then aloud, with a remorseful sweetness which she hoped would rob the words of their sting: “I’m sorry… I’m afraid… In fact… Well, you know what I mean.”
Ambrose, disjointed though her utterance was, knew but too well what she meant, and his eager face fell as if it, too, had got its left foot entangled with its right elbow.
“I see,” he said. “Yes, I get your drift.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But you know how it is.”
“Oh, quite.”
There was a silence, broken only by the parrot asking one or both of them—it was impossible to say to whom the question was addressed—if they had seen by the dawn’s early light. Despite his efforts to keep a stiff upper lip, Ambrose Gusset was showing plainly how deeply this stymie had gashed his soul. His aspect caused the girl’s tender heart to bleed for him. She yearned for some means of softening the blow which she had been compelled to deliver.
And then she saw how this might be done.
“You used to speak,” she said, “of giving me a golf lesson.” Ambrose raised his bowed head.
“So I did.”
“Would you like to give me one now?” Ambrose’s sombre face lit up.
“May I really?”
“Do. I’ll go and fetch my racquet.”
“You don’t use a racquet.”
“Then how do you get the ball over the net?”
“There isn’t a net.”
“No net. What a peculiar game.”
She was still sniggering a little to herself, for she was a girl with a strong sense of the ridiculous, when they came on to the practice tee.
“Now,” said Ambrose, having teed up the ball and placed the driver in her hands and adjusted her stance and enjoined upon her to come back slowly, “let’s see you paste it into the next county.”
Years of tennis playing (which, however bad for the soul, does, I admit, strengthen the thews and sinews) had given Evangeline Tewkesbury a fine physique, and Ambrose tells me that it was an inspiring sight to see her put every ounce of wrist and muscle into her shot. The only criticism which could have been made of her performance was that she missed the ball by about three inches.
It was her salvation. Evangeline Tewkesbury’s was an arrogant mind, and I think there can be no question that had she succeeded at her first effort in accomplishing an outstanding drive, she would have abandoned the game on the plea that it was too easy. For this, Ambrose had shocked me by telling me, was one of the things she had said about golf when urged to take a lesson.
But she had failed, and now it was but a question of time before the golf bug ran up her leg and bit her to the bone. Suddenly Ambrose saw come into her face that strange yearning look, composite of eagerness and humility, which is the infallible first symptom.
“Let me show you,” he said, seizing his opportunity with subtle skill. And taking the club from her he waggled briefly and sent a screamer down the fairway. “That—roughly—is the idea,” he said.
She was staring at him, in her gaze awe, admiration, respect, homage and devotion nicely blended.
“You must be terribly good at golf,” she said.
“Oh, fairish.”
“Could you teach me to play?”
“In a few lessons. Unfortunately I shall be leaving almost immediately for the Rocky Mountains, to shoot grizzly bears.”
“Oh, must you?”
“Surely it is the usual procedure for a man in my position.” There was a silence. Her foot made arabesques on the turf. “It seems rather tough on the grizzlies,” she said at length. “Into each life some rain must fall.”
“Look,” said Evangeline. “I think I see a way out.”
“There is only one way out.”
“That is the way I mean.”
Ambrose quivered from the top of his head to the soles of his sure-grip shoes, as worn by all the leading professionals.
“You mean—?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“You really—?”
“Yes, really. I can’t imagine what I was thinking of when I said No just now. One makes these foolish mistakes.”
Ambrose dropped the club and folded her in a long, lingering embrace.
“My mate!” he cried. “Now,??
? he added, picking up the driver and placing it in her hands. “Slow back, don’t press, and keep your ‘ee on the ba’.”
CHAPTER IV
Feet of Clay
WITH the coming of dusk the blizzard which had been blowing all the afternoon had gained in force, and the trees outside the club-house swayed beneath it. The falling snow rendered the visibility poor, but the Oldest Member, standing at the smoking-room window, was able to recognize the familiar gleam of Cyril Jukes’s heather-mixture plus-fours as he crossed the icebound terrace from the direction of the caddy shed, and he gave a little nod of approval. No fair weather golfer himself when still a player, he liked to see the younger generation doing its round in the teeth of November gales.
On Cyril Jukes’s normally cheerful face, as he entered the room some moments later, there was the sort of look which might have been worn by a survivor of the last days of Pompeii. What had been happening to Cyril Jukes in the recent past it was impossible to say, but the dullest eye could discern that it had been plenty, and the Oldest Member regarded him sympathetically.
“Something on your mind, my boy?”
“A slight tiff with the helpmeet.”
“I am sorry. What caused it?”
“Well, you know her little brother, and you will agree with me, I think that his long game wants polishing up.”
“Quite.”
“This can be done only by means of unremitting practice.”
“Very true.”
“So I took him out for a couple of rounds after lunch. We’ve just got back. We found the little woman waiting for us. She seemed rather stirred. Directing my attention to the fact that the child was bright blue and that icicles had formed on him, she said that if he expired his blood would be on my head. She then took him off to thaw him out with hot-water bottles. Life can be very difficult.”