“The winner?”
“Certainly.”
“I should have thought—I forget what I was going to say.”
McMurdo eyed him keenly.
“Gooch,” he said, “You are not one of those thoughtless butterflies, I hope, who go about breaking girls’ hearts?”
“No, no,” said John Gooch, learning for the first time that this was what butterflies did.
“You are not one of those men who win a good girl’s love and then ride away with a light laugh?”
John Gooch said he certainly was not. He would not dream of laughing, even lightly, at any girl. Besides, he added, he could not ride. He had once had three lessons in the Park, but had not seemed to be able to get the knack.
“So much the better for you,” said Sidney McMurdo heavily. “Because, if I thought that, I should know what steps to take. Even now. . . .” He paused, and looked at the poker in a rather yearning sort of way. “No, no,” he said, with a sigh, “better not, better not.” He flung the thing down with a gesture of resignation. “Better, perhaps, on the whole not.” He rose, frowning. “Well, good night, weed,” he said. “The match will be played on Friday morning. And may the better—or, rather, the less impossibly foul—man win.”
He banged the door, and John Gooch was alone.
But not for long. Scarcely half an hour had passed when the door opened once more to admit Frederick Pilcher. The artist’s face was pale, and he was breathing heavily. He sat down, and after a brief interval contrived to summon up a smile. He rose and patted John Gooch on the shoulder.
“John,” he said, “I am a man who as a general rule hides his feelings. I mask my affections. But I want to say, straight out, here and now, that I like you, John.”
“Yes?” said John Gooch.
Frederick Pilcher patted his other shoulder.
“I like you so much, John, old man, that I can read your thoughts, strive to conceal them though you may. I have been watching you closely of late, John, and I know your secret. You love Agnes Flack.”
“I don’t!”
“Yes, you do. Ah, John, John,” said Frederick Pilcher, with a gentle smile, “why try to deceive an old friend? You love her, John. You love that girl. And I have good news for you, John—tidings of great joy. I happen to know that she will look favourably on your suit. Go in and win, my boy, go in and win. Take my advice and dash round and propose without a moment’s delay.”
John Gooch shook his head. He, too smiled a gentle smile.
“Frederick,” he said, “this is like you. Noble. That’s what I call it. Noble. It’s the sort of thing the hero does in act two. But it must not be, Frederick. It must not, shall not be. I also can read a friend’s heart, and I know that you, too, love Agnes Flack. And I yield my claim. I am excessively fond of you Frederick, and I give her up to you. God bless you, old fellow. God, in fact, bless both of you.”
“Look here,” said Frederick Pilcher, “have you been having a visit from Sidney McMurdo?”
“He did drop in for a minute.”
There was a tense pause.
“What I can’t understand,” said Frederick Pilcher, at length, peevishly, “is why, if you don’t love this infernal girl, you kept calling at her house practically every night and sitting goggling at her with obvious devotion.”
“It wasn’t devotion.”
“It looked like it.”
“Well, it wasn’t. And, if it comes to that, why did you call on her practically every night and goggle just as much as I did?”
“I had a very good reason,” said Frederick Pilcher. “I was studying her face. I am planning a series of humorous drawings on the lines of Felix the Cat, and I wanted her as a model. To goggle at a girl in the interests of one’s Art, as I did, is a very different thing from goggling wantonly at her, like you.”
“Is that so?” said John Gooch. “Well, let me tell you that I wasn’t goggling wantonly. I was studying her psychology for a series of stories which I am preparing, entitled Madeline Monk, Murderess.”
Frederick Pilcher held out his hand.
“I wronged you, John,” he said. “However, be that as it may, the point is that we both appear to be up against it very hard. An extraordinarily well-developed man, that fellow McMurdo.”
“A mass of muscle.”
“And of a violent disposition.”
“Dangerously so.”
Frederick Pilcher drew out his handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead.
“You don’t think, John, that you might ultimately come to love Agnes Flack?”
“I do not.”
“Love frequently comes after marriage, I believe.”
“So does suicide.”
“Then it looks to me,” said Frederick Pilcher, “as if one of us was for it. I see no way out of playing that match.”
“Nor I.”
“The growing tendency on the part of the modern girl to read trashy magazine stories,” said Frederick Pilcher severely, “is one that I deplore. I view it with alarm. And I wish to goodness that you authors wouldn’t write tales about men who play golf matches for the hand of a woman.”
“Authors must live,” said John Gooch. “How is your game these days, Frederick?”
“Improved, unfortunately. I am putting better.”
“I am steadier off the tee.” John Gooch laughed bitterly. “When I think of the hours of practice I have put in, little knowing that a thing of this sort was in store for me, I appreciate the irony of life. If I had not bought Sandy McHoots’ book last spring I might now be in a position to be beaten five and four.”
“Instead of which, you will probably win the match on the twelfth.”
John Gooch started.
“You can’t be as bad as that!”
“I shall be on Friday.”
“You mean to say you aren’t going to try?”
“I do.”
“You have sunk to such depths that you would deliberately play below your proper form?”
“I have.”
“Pilcher,” said John Gooch, coldly, “you are a hound, and I never liked you from the start.”
You would have thought that, after the conversation which I have just related, no depth of low cunning on the part of Frederick Pilcher would have had the power to surprise John Gooch. And yet, as he saw the other come out of the club-house to join him on the first tee on the Friday morning, I am not exaggerating when I say that he was stunned.
John Gooch had arrived at the links early, wishing to get in a little practice. One of his outstanding defects as a golfer was a pronounced slice; and it seemed to him that, if he drove off a few balls before the match began, he might be able to analyse this slice and see just what was the best stance to take up in order that it might have full scope. He was teeing his third ball when Frederick Pilcher appeared.
“What—what—what⎯!” gasped John Gooch.
For Frederick Pilcher, discarding the baggy mustard-coloured plus-fours in which it was his usual custom to infest the links, was dressed in a perfectly fitting morning-coat, yellow waistcoat, striped trousers, spats, and patent-leather shoes. He wore a high stiff collar, and on his head was the glossiest top-hat ever seen off the Stock Exchange. He looked intensely uncomfortable; and yet there was on his face a smirk which he made no attempt to conceal.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Why are you dressed like that?” John Gooch uttered an exclamation. “I see it all. You think it will put you off your game.”
“Some idea of the kind did occur to me,” replied Frederick Pilcher, airily.
“You fiend!”
“Tut, tut, John. These are hard words to use to a friend.”
“You are no friend of mine.”
“A pity,” said Frederick Pilcher, “for I was hoping that you would ask me to be your best man at the wedding.” He took a club from his bag and swung it. “Amazing what a difference clothes make. You would hardly believe how this coat cramps t
he shoulders. I feel as if I were a sardine trying to wriggle in its tin.”
The world seemed to swim before John Gooch’s eyes. Then the mist cleared, and he fixed Frederick Pilcher with a hypnotic gaze.
“You are going to play well,” he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly. “You are going to play well. You are going to play well. You⎯”
“Stop it!” cried Frederick Pilcher.
“You are going to play well. You are going⎯”
A heavy hand descended on his shoulder. Sidney McMurdo was regarding him with a black scowl.
“We don’t want any of your confounded chivalry,” said Sidney McMurdo. “This match is going to be played in the strictest spirit of⎯ What the devil are you dressed like that for?” he demanded, wheeling on Frederick Pilcher.
“I—I have to go into the City immediately after the match,” said Pilcher. “I sha’n’t have time to change.”
“H’m. Well, it’s your own affair. Come along,” said Sidney McMurdo, gritting his teeth. “I’ve been told to referee this match, and I don’t want to stay here all day. Toss for the honour, worms.”
John Gooch spun a coin. Frederick Pilcher called tails. The coin fell heads up.
“Drive off, reptile,” said Sidney McMurdo.
As John Gooch addressed his ball, he was aware of a strange sensation which he could not immediately analyse. It was only when, after waggling two or three times, he started to draw his club back that it flashed upon him that this strange sensation was confidence. For the first time in his life he seemed to have no doubt that the ball, well and truly struck, would travel sweetly down the middle of the fairway. And then the hideous truth dawned on him. His subconscious self had totally misunderstood the purport of his recent remarks and had got the whole thing nicely muddled up.
Much has been written of the subconscious self, and all that has been written goes to show that of all the thick-headed, blundering chumps who take everything they hear literally, it is the worst. Anybody of any intelligence would have realized that when John Gooch said, “You are going to play well,” he was speaking to Frederick Pilcher; but his subconscious self had missed the point completely. It had heard John Gooch say, “You are going to play well,” and it was seeing that he did so.
The unfortunate man did what he could. Realizing what had happened, he tried with a despairing jerk to throw his swing out of gear just as the club came above his shoulder. It was a fatal move. You may recall that when Arnaud Massy won the British Open Championship one of the features of his play was a sort of wiggly twiggle at the top of the swing, which seemed to have the effect of adding yards to his drive. This wiggly twiggle John Gooch, in his effort to wreck his shot, achieved to a nicety. The ball soared over the bunker in which he had hoped to waste at least three strokes; and fell so near the green that it was plain that only a miracle could save him from getting a four.
There was a sardonic smile on Frederick Pilcher’s face as he stepped on to the tee. In a few moments he would be one down, and it would not be his fault if he failed to maintain the advantage. He drew back the head of his club. His coat, cut by a fashionable tailor who, like all fashionable tailors, resented it if the clothes he made permitted his customers to breathe, was so tight that he could not get the club-head more than half-way up. He brought it to this point, then brought it down in a lifeless semi-circle.
“Nice!” said Sidney McMurdo, involuntarily. He despised and disliked Frederick Pilcher, but he was a golfer. And a golfer cannot refrain from giving a good shot its meed of praise.
For the ball, instead of trickling down the hill as Frederick Pilcher had expected, was singing through the air like a shell. It fell near John Gooch’s ball and, bounding past it, ran on to the green.
The explanation was, of course, simple. Frederick Pilcher was a man who, in his normal golfing costume, habitually over-swung. This fault the tightness of his coat had now rendered impossible. And his other pet failing, the raising of the head, had been checked by the fact that he was wearing a top-hat. It had been Pilcher’s intention to jerk his head till his spine cracked; but the unseen influence of generations of ancestors who had devoted the whole of their intellect to the balancing of top-hats on windy days was too much for him.
A minute later the two men had halved the hole in four.
The next hole, the water-hole, they halved in three. The third, long and over the hill, they halved in five.
And it was as they moved to the fourth tee that a sort of madness came upon both Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch simultaneously.
These two, you must remember, were eighteen-handicap men. That is to say, they thought well of themselves if they could get sixes on the first, sevens on the third, and anything from fours to elevens on the second—according to the number of balls they sank in the water. And they had done these three holes in twelve. John Gooch looked at Frederick Pilcher and Frederick Pilcher looked at John Gooch. Their eyes were gleaming, and they breathed a little stertorously through their noses.
“Pretty work,” said John Gooch.
“Nice stuff,” said Frederick Pilcher.
“Get a move on, blisters,” growled Sidney McMurdo.
It was at this point that the madness came upon these two men.
Picture to yourself their position. Each felt that by continuing to play in this form he was running a deadly risk of having to marry Agnes Flack. Each felt that his opponent could not possibly keep up so hot a pace much longer, and the prudent course, therefore, was for himself to ease off a bit before the crash came. And each, though fully aware of all this, felt that he was dashed if he wasn’t going to have a stab at doing the round of his life. It might well be that, having started off at such a clip, he would find himself finishing somewhere in the eighties. And that, surely, would compensate for everything.
After all, felt John Gooch, suppose he did marry Agnes Flack, what of it? He had faith in his star, and it seemed to him that she might quite easily get run over by a truck or fall off a cliff during the honeymoon. Besides, with all the facilities for divorce which modern civilization so beneficently provides, what was there to be afraid of in marriage, even with an Agnes Flack?
Frederick Pilcher’s thoughts were equally optimistic. Agnes Flack, he reflected, was undeniably a pot of poison; but so much the better. Just the wife to keep an artist up to the mark. Hitherto he had had a tendency to be a little lazy. He had avoided his studio and loafed about the house. Married to Agnes Flack, his studio would see a lot more of him. He would spend all day in it—probably have a truckle bed put in and never leave it at all. A sensible man, felt Frederick Pilcher, can always make a success of marriage if he goes about it in the right spirit.
John Gooch’s eyes gleamed. Frederick Pilcher’s jaw protruded. And neck and neck, fighting grimly for their sixes and sometimes even achieving fives, they came to the ninth green, halved the hole, and were all square at the turn.
It was at this point that they perceived Agnes Flack standing on the club-house terrace.
“Yoo-hoo!” cried Agnes in a voice of thunder.
And John Gooch and Frederick Pilcher stopped dead in their tracks, blinking like abruptly-awakened somnambulists.
She made a singularly impressive picture, standing there with her tweed-clad form outlined against the white of the club-house wall. She had the appearance of one who is about to play Boadicea in a pageant; and John Gooch, as he gazed at her, was conscious of a chill that ran right down his back and oozed out at the soles of his feet.
“How’s the match coming along?” she yelled, cheerily.
“All square,” replied Sidney McMurdo, with a sullen scowl. “Wait where you are for a minute, germs,” he said. “I wish to have a word with Miss Flack.”
He drew Agnes aside and began to speak to her in a low rumbling voice. And presently it was made apparent to all within a radius of half a mile that he had been proposing to her once again, for suddenly she threw her head back and there went reverberatin
g over the countryside that old familiar laugh.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!” laughed Agnes Flack.
John Gooch shot a glance at his opponent. The artist, pale to the lips, was removing his coat and hat and handing them to his caddie. And, even as John Gooch looked, he unfastened his braces and tied them round his waist. It was plain that from now on Frederick Pilcher intended to run no risk of not overswinging.
John Gooch could appreciate his feelings. The thought of how that laugh would sound across the bacon and eggs on a rainy Monday morning turned the marrow in his spine to ice and curdled every red corpuscle in his veins. Gone was the exhilarating ferment which had caused him to skip like a young ram when a long putt had given him a forty-six for the first nine. How bitterly he regretted now those raking drives, those crisp flicks of the mashie-niblick of which he had been so proud ten minutes ago. If only he had not played such an infernally good game going out, he reflected, he might at this moment be eight or nine down and without a care in the world.
A shadow fell between him and the sun; and he turned to see Sidney McMurdo standing by his side, glaring with a singular intensity.
“Bah!” said Sidney McMurdo, having regarded him in silence for some moments.
He turned on his heel and made for the club-house.
“Where are you going, Sidney?” asked Agnes Flack.
“I am going home,” replied Sidney McMurdo, “before I murder these two miserable harvest-bugs. I am only flesh and blood, and the temptation to grind them into powder and scatter them to the four winds will shortly become too strong. Good morning.”
Agnes emitted another laugh like a steam-riveter at work.
“Isn’t he funny?” she said, addressing John Gooch, who had clutched at his scalp and was holding it down as the vibrations died away. “Well, I suppose I shall have to referee the rest of the match myself. Whose honour? Yours? Then drive off and let’s get at it.”
The demoralizing effects of his form on the first nine holes had not completely left John Gooch. He drove long and straight, and stepped back appalled. Only a similar blunder on the part of his opponent could undo the damage.