“I love you,” explained the beautiful unknown. “Kiss me.”
If she had studied for weeks she could not have found a better approach to Sidney McMurdo and one more calculated to overcome any customer’s sales resistance which might have been lurking in him. Something along these lines from a woman something along her lines was exactly what he had been feeling he could do with. A lover who has just got off a stuffy train to find himself discarded like a worn out glove by the girl he has worshipped and trusted, is ripe for treatment of this kind.
His bruised spirit began to heal. He kissed her, as directed, and there started to burgeon within him the thought that Agnes Flack wasn’t everybody and that it would do her no harm to have this demonstrated to her. A heartening picture flitted through his mind of himself ambling up to Agnes Flack with this spectacular number on his arm, saying to her: “If you don’t want me, it would appear that there are others who do.”
“Nice day,” he said, to help the conversation along.
“Divine. Hark to the wavelets, plashing on the shore. How they seem to fill one with a sense of the inexpressibly ineffable.”
“That’s right. They do, don’t they?”
“Are they singing us songs of old Greece, of Triton blowing on his wreathed horn and the sunlit loves of gods and goddesses?”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you,” said Sidney McMurdo. “I’m a stranger in these parts myself.”
She sighed.
“I, too. But it is my fate to be stranger everywhere. I live a life apart; alone, aloof, solitary, separate; wrapped up in my dreams and vision. ‘Tis ever so with the artist.”
“You’re a painter?”
“In ink, not in oils. I depict the souls of men and women. I am Cora McGuffy Spottsworth.”
The name was new to Sidney, who seldom got much beyond the golf weeklies and the house organ of the firm for which he worked, but he gathered that she must be a writer of sorts and made a mental note to wire Brentano’s for her complete output and bone it up without delay.
They walked along in silence. At the next ice cream stand he bought her a nut sundae, and she ate it with a sort of restrained emotion which suggested the presence of banked-up fires, one hand wielding the spoon, the other nestling in his like a white orchid.
Sidney McMurdo was now right under the ether. As he sipped his sarsaparilla, his soul seemed to heave and bubble like a Welsh rarebit coming to the boil. From regarding this woman merely as a sort of stooge, to be exhibited to Agnes Flack as evidence that McMurdo Preferred, even if she had seen fit to unload her holdings, was far from being a drug in the market, he had come to look upon her as a strong man’s mate. So that when, having disposed of the last spoonful, she said she hoped he had not thought her abrupt just now in saying that she loved him, he replied “Not at all, not at all,” adding that it was precisely the sort of thing he liked to hear. It amazed him that he could ever have considered a mere number-three-iron-swinging robot like Agnes Flack as a life partner.
“It needs but a glance, don’t you think, to recognize one’s mate?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Especially if you have met and loved before. You remember those old days in Egypt?”
“Egypt?” Sidney was a little bewildered. The town she mentioned was, he knew, in Illinois, but he had never been there.
“In Egypt, Antony.”
“The name is Sidney. McMurdo, Sidney George.”
“In your present incarnation, possibly. But once, long ago, you were Marc Antony and I was Cleopatra.”
“Of course, yes,” said Sidney. “It all comes back to me.”
“What times those were. That night on the Nile!”
“Some party.”
“I drew Revell Carstairs in my Furnace of Sin from my memories of you in the old days. He was tall and broad and strong, but with the heart of a child. All these years I have been seeking for you, and now that I have found you, would you have had me hold back and mask my love from respect for outworn fetishes of convention?”
“You betcher. I mean, you betcher not.”
“What have we to do with conventions? The world would say that I have known you for a mere half-hour—”
“Twenty-five minutes,” said Sidney, who was rather a stickler for accuracy, consulting his wrist-watch.
“Or twenty-five minutes. In Egypt I was in your arms in forty seconds.”
“Quick service.”
“That was ever my way, direct and sudden and impulsive. I remember saying once to Mr Spottsworth—”
Sidney McMurdo was conscious of a quick chill, similar to that which had affected him when Captain Jack Fosdyke had spoken of elephant guns and notches. His moral code, improving after a rocky start in his Marc Antony days, had become rigid and would never allow him to be a breaker-up of homes. Besides, there was his insurance company to be considered. A scandal might mean the loss of his second vice-presidency.
“Mr Spottsworth?” he echoed, his jaw falling a little. “Is there a Mr Spottsworth?”
“Not now. He has left me.”
“The low hound.”
“He had no option. Double pneumonia. By now, no doubt, he has been reincarnated, but probably only as a jellyfish. A jellyfish need not come between us.”
“Certainly not,” said Sidney McMurdo, speaking warmly, for he had once been stung by one, and they resumed their saunter.
Agnes Flack, meanwhile, though basking in the rays of Captain Jack Fosdyke, had by no means forgotten Sidney McMurdo. In the days that followed their painful interview, in the intervals of brushing up her fifty yards from the pin game in preparation for the Women’s Singles contest which was shortly to take place, she found her thoughts dwelling on him quite a good deal. A girl who has loved, even if mistakenly, can never be indifferent to the fortunes of the man whom she once regarded as the lode star of her life. She kept wondering how he was making out, and hoped that his vacation was not being spoiled by a broken heart.
The first time she saw him, accordingly, she should have been relieved and pleased. He was escorting Cora McGuffy Sports-worth along the boardwalk, and it was abundantly obvious even from a casual glance that if his heart had ever been broken, there had been some adroit work done in the repair shop. Clark Gable could have improved his technique by watching the way he bent over Cora McGuffy Spottsworth and stroked her slender arm. He also, while bending and stroking, whispered into her shell-like ear, and you could see that what he was saying was good stuff. His whole attitude was that of a man who, recognizing that he was on a good thing, was determined to push it along.
But Agnes Flack was not relieved and pleased; she was disturbed and concerned. She was perhaps a hard judge, but Cora McGuffy Spottsworth looked to her like the sort of woman who goes about stealing the plans of forts—or, at the best, leaning back negligently on a settee and saying “Prince, my fan”. The impression Agnes formed was of something that might be all right stepping out of a pie at a bachelor party, but not the type you could take home to meet mother.
Her first move, therefore, on encountering Sidney at the golf club one morning, was to institute a probe.
“Who,” she demanded, not beating about the bush, “was that lady I saw you walking down the street with?”
Her tone, in which he seemed to detect the note of criticism, offended Sidney.
“That,” he replied with a touch of hauteur, “was no lady, that was my fiancée.”
Agnes reeled. She had noticed that he was wearing a new tie and that his hair had been treated with Sticko, the pomade that satisfies, but she had not dreamed that matters had proceeded as far as this.
“You are engaged?”
“And how!”
“Oh, Sidney!”
He stiffened.
“That will be all of that ‘Oh, Sidney!’ stuff,” he retorted with spirit. “I don’t see what you have to beef about. You were offered the opportunity of a merger, and when you failed to take up your option I was free, I presume, to ope
n negotiations elsewhere. As might have been foreseen, I was snapped up the moment it got about that I was in the market.”
Agnes Flack bridled.
“I’m not jealous.”
“Then what’s your kick?”
“It’s just that I want to see you happy.”
“I am.”
“How can you be happy with a woman who looks like a snake with hips?”
“She has every right to look like a snake with hips. In a former incarnation she used to be Cleopatra. I,” said Sidney McMurdo, straightening his tie, “was Antony.”
“Who told you that?”
“She did. She has all the facts.”
“She must be crazy.”
“Not at all. I admit that for a while at our first meeting some such thought did cross my mind, but the matter is readily explained. She is a novelist. You may have heard of Cora McGuffy Spottsworth?”
Agnes uttered a cry.
“What? Oh, she can’t be.”
“She has documents to prove it.”
“But Sidney, she’s awful. At my school two girls were expelled because they were found with her books under their pillows. Her publisher’s slogan is ‘Spottsworth for Blushes’. You can’t intend to marry a woman who notoriously has to write her love scenes on asbestos.”
“Well, what price your intending to marry a prominent international plug-ugly who thinks nothing of shooting people with elephant guns?”
“Only African chiefs.”
“African chiefs are also God’s creatures.”
“Not when under the influence of trade gin, Jack says. He says you have to shoot them with elephant guns then, It means nothing more, he says, than if you drew their attention to some ruling by Emily Post. Besides, he knows Bobby Jones.”
“So does Bobby Jones’s grocer. Does he play golf himself? That’s the point.”
“He plays beautifully.”
“So does Cora. She expects to win the Women’s Singles.”
Agnes drew herself up haughtily. She was expecting to win the Women’s Singles herself.
“She does, does she?”
“Yes, she does.”
“Over my dead body.”
“That would be a mashie niblick shot,” said Sydney McMurdo thoughtfully. “She’s wonderful with her mashie niblick.”
With a powerful effort Agnes Flack choked down her choler.
“Well, I hope it will be all right,” she said.
“Of course it will be all right. I’m about the luckiest man alive.”
“In any case, it’s fortunate that we found out our mistake in time.”
“I’ll say so. A nice thing it would have been, if all this had happened after we were married. We should have had one of those situations authors have to use a row of dots for.”
“Yes. Even if we had been married, I should have flown to Jack.”
“And I should have flown to Cora.”
“He once killed a lion with a sardine opener.”
“Cora once danced with the Duke of Windsor,” said Sidney McMurdo, and with a proud tilt of the chin, went off to give his betrothed lunch.
As a close student of the game of golf in all its phases over a considerable number of years, I should say that Women’s Singles at fashionable seashore resorts nearly always follow the same general lines. The participants with a reasonable hope of bringing home the bacon seldom number more than three or four, the rest being the mere dregs of the golfing world who enter for the hell of the thing or because they know they look well in sports clothes. The preliminary rounds, accordingly, are never worth watching or describing. The rabbits eliminate each other with merry laughs and pretty squeals, and the tigresses massacre the surviving rabbits, till by the time the semi-final is reached, only grim-faced experts are left in.
It was so with the tourney this year at East Bampton. Agnes had no difficulty in murdering the four long handicap fluffies with whom she was confronted in the early stages, and entered the semi-final with the feeling that the competition proper was now about to begin.
Watching, when opportunity offered, the play of the future Mrs Sidney McMurdo, who also had won through to the penultimate round, she found herself feeling a little easier in her mind. Cora McGuffy Spottsworth still looked to her like one of those women who lure men’s souls to the shoals of sin, but there was no question that, as far as knowing what to do with a number four iron when you put it into her hands, was concerned, she would make a good wife. Her apprehensions regarding Sidney’s future were to a certain extent relieved.
It might be that his bride at some future date would put arsenic in his coffee or elope with the leader of a band, but before she did so, she would in all essential respects be a worthy mate. He would never have to suffer that greatest of all spiritual agonies, the misery of the husband whose wife insists on his playing with her daily because the doctor thinks she ought to have fresh air and exercise. Cora McGuffy Spottsworth might, and probably would, recline on tiger skins in the nude and expect Sidney to drink champagne out of her shoe, but she would never wear high heels on the links or say Tee-hee when she missed a putt. On the previous day, while eliminating her most recent opponent, she had done the long hole in four, and Agnes, who had just taken a rather smelly six, was impressed.
The afternoon of the semi-final was one of those heavy, baking afternoons which cause people to crawl about saying that it is not the heat they mind, but the humidity. After weeks of sunshine the weather was about to break. Thunder was in the air, and once sprightly caddies seemed to droop beneath the weight of their bags. To Agnes, who was impervious to weather conditions, this testing warmth was welcome. It might, she felt, affect her adversary’s game.
Cora McGuffy Spottsworth and her antagonist drove off first, and once again Agnes was impressed by the lissom fluidity of the other’s swing. Sidney, who was hovering lovingly in the offing, watched her effort with obvious approval.
“You won’t want that one back, old girl,” he said, and a curious pang shot through Agnes, as if she had bitten into a bad oyster. How often had she heard him say the same thing to her! For an instant she was aware of a sorrowful sense of loss. Then her eye fell on Captain Jack Fosdyke, smoking a debonair cigarette, and the anguish abated. If Captain Jack Fosdyke was not a king among men, she told herself, she didn’t know a king among men when she saw one.
When the couple ahead were out of distance, she drove off and achieved her usual faultless shot. Captain Jack Fosdyke said it reminded him of one he had made when playing a friendly round with Harry Hopkins, and they moved off.
From the moment when her adversary had driven off the first tee, Agnes Flack had realized that she had no easy task before her, but one that would test her skill to the utmost. The woman in question looked like a schoolmistress, and she hit her ball as if it had been a refractory pupil. And to increase the severity of Agnes’s ordeal, she seldom failed to hit it straight.
Agnes, too, being at the top of her form, the result was that for ten holes the struggle proceeded with but slight advantage to either. At the sixth, Agnes, putting superbly, contrived to be one up, only to lose her lead on the seventh, where the schoolmistress holed out an iron shot for a birdie. They were all square at the turn, and still all square on the eleventh tee. It was as Agnes was addressing her ball here that there came a roll of thunder, and the rain which had been threatening all the afternoon began to descend in liberal streams.
It seemed to Agnes Flack that Providence was at last intervening on behalf of a good woman. She was always at her best in dirty weather. Give her a tropical deluge accompanied by thunderbolts, and other Acts of God, and she took on a new vigour. And she just had begun to be filled with a stern joy, the joy of an earnest golfer who after a gruelling struggle feels that the thing is in the bag, when she was chagrined to observe that her adversary appeared to be of precisely the same mind. So far from being discouraged by the warring elements, the schoolmistress plainly welcomed the new conditions. Ta
king in the rain at every pore with obvious relish, she smote her ball as if it had been writing rude things about her on the blackboard, and it was as much as Agnes could do to halve the eleventh and twelfth.
All this while Captain Fosdyke had been striding round with them, chatting between the strokes of cannibals he had met and lions which had regretted meeting him, but during these last two holes a strange silence had fallen upon him. And it was as Agnes uncoiled herself on the thirteenth tee after another of her powerful drives that she was aware of him at her elbow, endeavouring to secure her attention. His coat collar was turned up, and he looked moist and unhappy.
“I say,” he said, “what about this?”
“What?”
“This bally rain.”
“Just a Scotch mist.”
“Don’t you think you had better chuck it?” Agnes stared.
“Are you suggesting that I give up the match?”
“That’s the idea.”
Agnes stared again.
“Give up my chance of getting into the final just because of a drop of ram?”
“Well, we’re getting dashed wet, what? And golf’s only a game, I mean, if you know what I mean.”
Agnes’s eyes flashed like the lightning which had just struck a tree not far off.
“I would not dream of forfeiting the match,” she cried. “And if you leave me now, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Oh, right ho,” said Captain Jack Fosdyke. “Merely a suggestion.”
He turned his collar up a little higher, and the game proceeded. Agnes was rudely shaken. Those frightful words about golf being only a game kept ringing in her head. This thing had come upon her like one of the thunderbolts which she liked to have around her when playing an important match. In the brief period of time during which she had known him, Captain Jack Fosdyke’s game had appealed to her depths. He had shown himself a skilful and meritorious performer, at times brilliant. But what is golfing skill, if the golfing spirit is absent?
Then a healing thought came to her. He had but jested. In the circles in which he moved, the gay world of African chiefs and English dukes in which he had so long had his being, light-hearted badinage of this kind was no doubt de rigueur. To hold his place in that world, a man had to be a merry kidder, a light josher and a mad wag. It was probably because he thought she needed cheering up that he had exercised his flashing wit.