“I’m sorry I kept you so long,” she said. “It’s your honour. Fire away, and remember that you’ve got to do this nine in fifty-three at the outside.”
Rollo’s thought flitted wistfully to the snug surgery where Dr. Brown was probably sitting at this moment surrounded by the finest antidotes.
“Do you know, I think I ought to⎯”
“Of course you ought to,” said Mary. “If you did the first nine in forty-six, you can’t possibly take fifty-three coming in.”
For one long moment Rollo continued to hesitate—a moment during which the instinct of self-preservation seemed as if it must win the day. All his life he had been brought up to be nervous about his health, and panic gripped him. But there is a deeper, nobler instinct than that of self-preservation—the instinctive desire of a golfer who is at the top of his form to go on and beat his medal-score record. And little by little this grand impulse began to dominate Rollo. If, he felt, he went off now to take antidotes, the doctor might possibly save his life; but reason told him that never again would he be likely to do the first nine in forty-six. He would have to start all over afresh.
Rollo Podmarsh hesitated no longer. With a pale, set face he teed up his ball and drove.
If I were telling this story to a golfer instead of to an excrescence—I use the word in the kindliest spirit—who spends his time messing about on a bowling-green, nothing would please me better than to describe shot by shot Rollo’s progress over the remaining nine holes. Epics have been written with less material. But these details would, I am aware, be wasted on you. Let it suffice that by the time his last approach trickled on to the eighteenth green he had taken exactly fifty shots.
“Three for it!” said Mary Kent. “Steady now! Take it quite easy and be sure to lay your second dead.”
It was prudent counsel, but Rollo was now thoroughly above himself. He had got his feet wet in a puddle on the sixteenth, but he did not care. His winter woollies seemed to be lined with ants, but he ignored them. All he knew was that he was on the last green in ninety-six, and he meant to finish in style. No tame three putts for him! His ball was five yards away, but he aimed for the back of the hole and brought his putter down with a whack. Straight and true the ball sped, hit the tin, jumped high in the air, and fell into the hole with a rattle.
“Oo!” cried Mary.
Rollo Podmarsh wiped his forehead and leaned dizzily on his putter. For a moment, so intense is the fervour induced by the game of games, all he could think of was that he had gone round in ninety-seven. Then, as one waking from a trance, he began to appreciate his position. The fever passed, and a clammy dismay took possession of him. He had achieved his life’s ambition; but what now? Already he was conscious of a curious discomfort within him. He felt as he supposed Italians of the Middle Ages must have felt after dropping in to take pot-luck with the Borgias. It was hard. He had gone round in ninety-seven, but he could never take the next step in the career which he had mapped out in his dreams—the money-match with the lumbago-stricken Colonel Bodger.
Mary Kent was fluttering round him, bubbling congratulations, but Rollo sighed.
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much. But the trouble is, I’m afraid I’m going to die almost immediately. I’ve been poisoned!”
“Poisoned!”
“Yes. Nobody is to blame. Everything was done with the best intentions. But there it is.”
“But I don’t understand.”
Rollo explained. Mary listened pallidly.
“Are you sure?” she gasped.
“Quite sure,” said Rollo, gravely. “The arrowroot tasted rummy.”
“But arrowroot always does.”
Rollo shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It tastes like warm blotting-paper, but not rummy.”
Mary was sniffing.
“Don’t cry,” urged Rollo tenderly. “Don’t cry.”
“But I must. And I’ve come out without a handkerchief.”
“Permit me,” said Rollo, producing one of her best from his left breast-pocket.
“I wish I had a powder-puff,” said Mary.
“Allow me,” said Rollo. “And your hair has become a little disordered. If I may⎯” And from the same reservoir he drew a handful of hairpins.
Mary gazed at these exhibits with astonishment.
“But these are mine,” she said.
“Yes. I sneaked them from time to time.”
“But why?”
“Because I loved you,” said Rollo. And in a few moving sentences which I will not trouble you with he went on to elaborate this theme.
Mary listened with her heart full of surging emotions, which I cannot possibly go into if you persist in looking at that damned watch of yours. The scales had fallen from her eyes. She had thought slightingly of this man because he had been a little over-careful of his health, and all the time he had had within him the potentiality of heroism. Something seemed to snap inside her.
“Rollo!” she cried, and flung herself into his arms.
“Mary!” muttered Rollo, gathering her up.
“I told you it was all nonsense,” said Mrs. Willoughby, coming up at this tense moment and going on with the conversation where she had left off. “I’ve just seen Letty, and she said she meant to put you out of your misery but the chemist wouldn’t sell her any poison, so she let it go.”
Rollo disentangled himself from Mary.
“What?” he cried.
Mrs. Willoughby repeated her remarks.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then why did the arrowroot taste rummy?”
“I made inquiries about that. It seems that mother was worried about your taking to smoking, and she found an advertisement in one of the magazines about the Tobacco Habit Cured in Three Days by a secret method without the victim’s knowledge. It was a gentle, safe, agreeable method of eliminating the nicotine poison from the system, strengthening the weakened membranes, and overcoming the craving; so she put some in your arrowroot every night.”
There was a long silence. To Rollo Podmarsh it seemed as though the sun had suddenly begun to shine, the birds to sing, and the grasshoppers to toot. All Nature was one vast substantial smile. Down in the valley by the second hole he caught sight of Wallace Chesney’s Plus Fours gleaming as their owner stooped to play his shot, and it seemed to him that he had never in his life seen anything so lovely.
“Mary,” he said, in a low, vibrant voice, “will you wait here for me? I want to go into the club-house for a moment.”
“To change your wet shoes?”
“No!” thundered Rollo. “I’m never going to change my wet shoes again in my life.” He felt in his pocket, and hurled a box of patent pills far into the undergrowth. “But I am going to change my winter woollies. And when I’ve put those dashed barbed-wire entanglements into the club-house furnace, I’m going to phone to old Colonel Bodger. I hear his lumbago’s worse than ever. I’m going to fix up a match with him for a shilling a hole. And if I don’t lick the boots off him you can break the engagement!”
“My hero!” murmured Mary.
Rollo kissed her, and with long, resolute steps strode to the club-house.
18
RODNEY FAILS TO QUALIFY
THERE WAS A sound of revelry by night, for the first Saturday in June had arrived and the Golf Club was holding its monthly dance. Fairy lanterns festooned the branches of the chestnut trees on the terrace above the ninth green, and from the big dining-room, cleared now of its tables and chairs, came a muffled slithering of feet and the plaintive sound of saxophones moaning softly like a man who has just missed a short putt. In a basket-chair in the shadows, the Oldest Member puffed a cigar and listened, well content. His was the peace of the man who has reached the age when he is no longer expected to dance.
A door opened, and a young man came out of the club-house. He stood on the steps with folded arms, gazing to left and right.
The Oldest Member, watching him from the darkness, noted that he wore an air of gloom. His brow was furrowed and he had the indefinable look of one who has been smitten in the spiritual solar plexus.
Yes, where all around him was joy, jollity, and song, this young man brooded.
The sound of a high tenor voice, talking rapidly and entertainingly on the subject of modern Russian thought, now intruded itself on the peace of the night. From the farther end of the terrace a girl came into the light of the lantern, her arm in that of a second young man. She was small and pretty, he tall and intellectual. The light shone on his high forehead and glittered on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. The girl was gazing up at him with reverence and adoration, and at the sight of these twain the youth on the steps appeared to undergo some sort of spasm. His face became contorted and he wobbled. Then, with a gesture of sublime despair, he tripped over the mat and stumbled back into the club-house. The couple passed on and disappeared, and the Oldest Member had the night to himself, until the door opened once more and the club’s courteous and efficient secretary trotted down the steps. The scent of the cigar drew him to where the Oldest Member sat, and he dropped into the chair beside him.
“Seen young Ramage tonight?” asked the secretary.
“He was standing on those steps only a moment ago,” replied the Oldest Member. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought perhaps you might have had a talk with him and found out what’s the matter. Can’t think what’s come to him tonight. Nice, civil boy as a rule, but just now, when I was trying to tell him about my short approach on the fifth this afternoon, he was positively abrupt. Gave a sort of hollow gasp and dashed away in the middle of a sentence.”
The Oldest Member sighed.
“You must overlook his brusqueness,” he said. “The poor lad is passing through a trying time. A short while back I was the spectator of a little drama that explains everything. Mabel Patmore is flirting disgracefully with that young fellow Purvis.”
“Purvis? Oh, you mean the man who won the club Bowls Championship last week?”
“I can quite believe that he may have disgraced himself in the manner you describe,” said the Sage, coldly. “I know he plays that noxious game. And it is for that reason that I hate to see a nice girl like Mabel Patmore, who only needs a little more steadiness off the tee to become a very fair golfer, wasting her time on him. I suppose his attraction lies in the fact that he has a great flow of conversation, while poor Ramage is, one must admit, more or less of a dumb Isaac. Girls are too often snared by a glib tongue. Still, it is a pity, a great pity. The whole affair recalls irresistibly to my mind the story—”
The secretary rose with a whirr like a rocketing pheasant.
“—the story,” continued the Sage, “of Jane Packard, William Bates and Rodney Spelvin—which, as you have never heard it, I will now proceed to relate.”
“Can’t stop now, much as I should like—”
“It is a theory of mine,” proceeded the Oldest Member, attaching himself to the other’s coat-tails, and pulling him gently back into his seat, “that nothing but misery can come of the union between a golfer and an outcast whose soul has not been purified by the noblest of games. This is well exemplified by the story of Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
“All sorts of things to look after—”
“That is why I am hoping so sincerely that there is nothing more serious than a temporary flirtation in this business of Mabel Patmore and bowls-playing Purvis. A girl in whose life golf has become a factor, would be mad to trust her happiness to a blister whose idea of enjoyment is trundling wooden balls across a lawn. Sooner or later he is certain to fail her in some crisis. Lucky for her if this failure occurs before the marriage knot has been inextricably tied and so opens her eyes to his inadequacy—as was the case in the matter of Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin. I will now,” said the Oldest Member, “tell you all about Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
The secretary uttered a choking groan.
“I shall miss the next dance,” he pleaded.
“A bit of luck for some nice girl,” said the Sage, equably.
He tightened his grip on the other’s arm.
Jane Packard and William Bates (said the Oldest Member) were not, you must understand, officially engaged. They had grown up together from childhood, and there existed between them a sort of understanding—the understanding being that, if ever William could speed himself up enough to propose, Jane would accept him, and they would settle down and live stodgily and happily ever after. For William was not one of your rapid wooers. In his affair of the heart he moved somewhat slowly and ponderously, like a motor-lorry, an object which both in physique and temperament he greatly resembled. He was an extraordinarily large, powerful, ox-like young man, who required plenty of time to make up his mind about any given problem. I have seen him in the club dining-room musing with a thoughtful frown for fifteen minutes on end while endeavouring to weigh the rival merits of a chump chop and a sirloin steak as a luncheon dish. A placid, leisurely man, I might almost call him lymphatic. I will call him lymphatic. He was lymphatic.
The first glimmering of an idea that Jane might possibly be a suitable wife for him had come to William some three years before this story opens. Having brooded on the matter tensely for six months, he then sent her a bunch of roses. In the October of the following year, nothing having occurred to alter his growing conviction that she was an attractive girl, he presented her with a two-pound box of assorted chocolates. And from then on his progress, though not rapid, was continuous, and there seemed little reason to doubt that, should nothing come about to weaken Jane’s regard for him, another five years or so would see the matter settled.
And it did not appear likely that anything would weaken Jane’s regard. They had much in common, for she was a calm, slow-moving person, too. They had a mutual devotion to golf, and played together every day; and the fact that their handicaps were practically level formed a strong bond. Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband is too markedly superior to his wife at golf; this leading him, when she starts criticizing his relations, to say bitter and unforgivable things about her mashie-shots. Nothing of this kind could happen with William and Jane. They would build their life on a solid foundation of sympathy and understanding. The years would find them consoling and encouraging each other, happy married lovers. If, that is to say, William ever got round to proposing.
It was not until the fourth year of this romance that I detected the first sign of any alteration in the schedule. I had happened to call on the Packards one afternoon and found them all out except Jane. She gave me tea and conversed for a while, but she seemed distrait. I had known her since she wore rompers, so felt entitled to ask if there was anything wrong.
“Not exactly wrong,” said Jane, and she heaved a sigh.
“Tell me,” I said.
She heaved another sigh.
“Have you ever read The Love that Scorches, by Luella Periton Phipps?” she asked.
I said I had not.
“I got it out of the library yesterday,” said Jane, dreamily, “and finished it at three this morning in bed. It is a very, very beautiful book. It is all about the desert and people riding on camels and a wonderful Arab chief with stern, yet tender, eyes, and a girl called Angela, and oases and dates and mirages, and all like that. There is a chapter where the Arab chief seizes the girl and clasps her in his arms and she feels his hot breath searing her face and he flings her on his horse and they ride off and all around was sand and night, and the mysterious stars. And somehow—oh, I don’t know—”
She gazed yearningly at the chandelier.
“I wish mother would take me to Algiers next winter,” she murmured, absently. “It would do her rheumatism so much good.”
I went away frankly uneasy. These novelists, I felt, ought to be more careful. They put ideas into girls’ heads and made them dissa
tisfied. I determined to look William up and give him a kindly word of advice. It was no business of mine, you may say, but they were so ideally suited to one another that it seemed a tragedy that anything should come between them. And Jane was in a strange mood. At any moment, I felt, she might take a good, square look at William and wonder what she could ever have seen in him. I hurried to the boy’s cottage.
“William,” I said, “as one who dandled you on his knee when you were a baby, I wish to ask you a personal question. Answer me this, and make it snappy. Do you love Jane Packard?”
A look of surprise came into his face, followed by one of intense thought. He was silent for a space.
“Who, me?” he said at length.
“Yes, you.”
“Jane Packard?”
“Yes, Jane Packard.”
“Do I love Jane Packard?” said William, assembling the material and arranging it neatly in his mind.
He pondered for perhaps five minutes.
“Why, of course I do,” he said.
“Splendid!”
“Devotedly, dash it!”
“Capital!”
“You might say madly.”
I tapped him on his barrel-like chest.
“Then my advice to you, William Bates, is to tell her so.”
“Now that’s rather a brainy scheme,” said William, looking at me admiringly, “I see exactly what you’re driving at. You mean it would kind of settle things, and all that?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, I’ve got to go away for a couple of days tomorrow—it’s the Invitation Tournament at Squashy Hollow—but I’ll be back on Wednesday. Suppose I take her out on the links on Wednesday and propose?”
“A very good idea.”
“At the sixth hole, say?”
“At the sixth hole would do excellently.”
“Or the seventh?”
“The sixth would be better. The ground slopes from the tee, and you would be hidden from view by the dog-leg turn.”
“Something in that.”
“My own suggestion would be that you somehow contrive to lead her into that large bunker to the left of the sixth fairway.”