There was no suggestion of the hay fever patient as he drove off now. He smote his ball firmly and truly, and it would unquestionably have travelled several hundred yards had it not chanced to strike the ladies’ tee box and ricocheted into the rough. Encouraged by this, Rodney played a nice straight one down the middle and was able to square the match again.
A ding-dong struggle ensued, for both men were now on their mettle. First one would win a hole, then the other: and then, to increase the dramatic suspense, they would halve a couple. They arrived at the eighteenth all square.
The eighteenth was at that time one of those longish up-hill holes which present few difficulties if you can keep your drive straight, and it seemed after both men had driven that the issue would be settled on the green. But golf, as I said before, is an uncertain game. Rodney played a nice second to within fifty yards of the green, but Stocker, pressing, topped badly and with his next missed the globe altogether, tying himself in the process into a knot from which for an instant I thought it would be impossible to unravel him.
But he contrived to straighten himself out, and was collecting his faculties for another effort, when little Timothy came trotting up. He had a posy of wild flowers in his hand.
“Smell my pretty flowers, Mr. Stocker,” he chirped. And with a arch gesture he thrust the blooms beneath Joseph Stocker’s nose.
A hoarse cry sprang from the other’s lips, and he recoiled as if the bouquet had contained a snake.
“Hey, look out for my hay fever!” he cried, and already I saw that he was beginning to heave and writhe. Under a direct frontal attack like this even Sneezo loses its power to protect.
“Don’t bother the gentleman now dear,” said Rodney mildly. A glance at his face told me that he was saying to himself that this was something like family teamwork. “Run along and wait for Daddy on the green.”
Little Timothy skipped off, and once more Stocker addressed his ball. It was plain that it was going to be a close thing. A sneeze of vast proportions was evidently coming to a head within him like some great tidal wave, and if he meant to forestall it he would have to cut his customary deliberate waggle to something short and sharp like George Duncan’s. And I could see that he appreciated this.
But quickly though he waggled, he did not waggle quickly enough. The explosion came just as the club head descended on the ball.
The result was one of the most magnificent shots I have ever witnessed. It was as if the whole soul and essence of Joseph Stocker, poured into that colossal sneeze, had gone to the making of it. Straight and true, as if fired out of a gun, the ball flew up the hill and disappeared over the edge of the green.
It was with a thoughtful air that Rodney Spelvin prepared to play his chip shot. He had obviously been badly shaken by the miracle which he had just observed. But Anastatia had trained him well, and he made no mistake. He, too, was on the green and, as far as one could judge, very near the pin. Even supposing that Stocker was lying dead, he would still be in the enviable position of playing four as against the other’s five. And he was a very accurate putter.
Only when we arrived on the green were we able to appreciate the full drama of the situation. Stocker’s ball was nowhere to be seen, and it seemed for a moment as it it must have been snatched up to heaven. Then a careful search discovered it nestling in the hole.
“Ah,” said Joe Stocker, well satisfied. “Thought for a moment I had missed it.”
There was good stuff in Rodney Spelvin. The best he could hope for now was to take his opponent on the nineteenth, but he did not quail. His ball was lying some four feet from the hole, never at any time an easy shot but at the crisis of a hard-fought match calculated to unman the stoutest, and he addressed it with a quiet fortitude which I like to see.
Slowly he drew his club back, and brought it down. And as he did so, a clear childish voice broke the silence.
“Daddee!”
And Rodney, starting as if a red-hot iron had been placed against the bent seat of his knickerbockers, sent the ball scudding yards past the hole. Joseph Stocker was the winner of that year’s Rabbits Umbrella.
Rodney Spelvin straightened himself. His face was pale and drawn.
“Daddee, are daisies little bits of the stars that have been chipped off by the angels?”
A deep sigh shook Rodney Spelvin. I saw his eyes. They were alight with a hideous menace. Quickly and silently, like an African leopard stalking its prey, he advanced on the child. An instant later the stillness was disturbed by a series of reports like pistol shots.
I looked at Anastatia. There was distress on her face, but mingled with the distress a sort of ecstasy. She mourned as a mother, but rejoiced as a wife.
Rodney Spelvin was himself again.
That night little Braid Bates, addressing his father, said:
“How’s that poem coming along?”
William cast a hunted look at his helpmeet, and Jane took things in hand in her firm, capable way.
“That,” she said, “will be all of that. Daddy isn’t going to write any poem and, we shall want you out on the practice tee at seven sharp to-morrow, my lad.”
“But Uncle Rodney writes poems to Timothy.”
“No he doesn’t. Not now.”
“But . . .”
Jane regarded him with quiet intentness.
“Does Mother’s little chickabiddy want his nose pushed sideways?” she said. “Very well, then.”
29
TANGLED HEARTS
A MARRIAGE WAS being solemnized in the church that stands about a full spoon shot from the club-house. The ceremony had nearly reached its conclusion. As the officiating clergyman, coming to the nub of the thing, addressed the young man in the cutaway coat and spongebag trousers, there reigned throughout the sacred edifice a tense silence, such as prevails upon a racecourse just before the shout goes up, “They’re off!”
“Wilt thou,” he said, “—hup—Smallwood, take this—hup—Celia to be thy wedded wife?”
A sudden gleam came into the other’s horn-rimmed spectacled eyes.
“Say, listen,” he began. “Lemme tell you what to⎯”
He stopped, a blush mantling his face.
“I will,” he said.
A few moments later, the organ was pealing forth “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden”. The happy couple entered the vestry. The Oldest Member, who had been among those in the ringside pews, walked back to the club-house with the friend who was spending the week-end with him.
The friend seemed puzzled.
“Tell me,” he said. “Am I wrong, or did the bridegroom at one point in the proceedings start to ad lib with some stuff that was not on the routine?”
“He did, indeed,” replied the Oldest Member. “He was about to advise the minister what to do for his hiccoughs. I find the fact that he succeeded in checking himself very gratifying. It seems to show that his cure may be considered permanent.”
“His cure?”
“Until very recently Smallwood Bessemer was a confirmed adviser.”
“Bad, that.”
“Yes. I always advise people never to give advice. Mind you, one can find excuses for the young fellow. For many years he had been a columnist on one of the morning papers, and to columnists, accustomed day after day to set the world right on every conceivable subject, the giving of advice becomes a habit. It is an occupational risk. But if I had known young Bessemer better, I would have warned him that he was in danger of alienating Celia Todd, his betrothed, who was a girl of proud and independent spirit.
“Unfortunately, he was not a member of our little community. He lived in the city, merely coming here for occasional week-ends. At the time when my story begins, I had met him only twice, when he arrived to spend his summer vacation. And it was not long before, as I had feared would be the case, I found that all was not well between him and Celia Todd.”
The first intimation I had of this (the Sage proceeded) was when she called at my cottage accompa
nied by her Pekinese, Pirbright, to whom she was greatly attached, and unburdened her soul to me. Sinking listlessly into a chair, she sat silent for some moments. Then, as if waking from a reverie, she spoke abruptly.
“Do you think,” she said, “that true love can exist between a woman and a man, if the woman feels more and more every day that she wants to hit the man over the head with a brick?”
I was disturbed. I like to see the young folks happy. And my hope that she might merely be stating a hypothetical case vanished as she continued.
“Take me and Smallwood, for instance. I have to clench my fists sometimes till the knuckles stand out white under the strain, in order to stop myself from beaning him. This habit of his of scattering advice on every side like a sower going forth sowing is getting me down. It has begun to sap my reason. Only this morning, to show you what I mean, we were walking along the road and we met that wolfhound of Agnes Flack’s, and it said something to Pirbright about the situation in China that made him hot under the collar. The little angel was just rolling up his sleeves and starting in to mix it, when I snatched him away. And Smallwood said I shouldn’t have done it. I should have let them fight it out, he said, so that they could get it out of their systems, after which a beautiful friendship would have resulted. I told him he was the sort of human fiend who ought to be eating peanuts in the front row at a bull fight, and we parted on rather distant terms.”
“The clouds will clear away.”
“I wonder,” said Celia. “I have a feeling that one of these days he will go too far, and something will crack.”
In the light of this conversation, what happened at the dance becomes intelligible. Every Saturday night we have a dance at the club-house, at which all the younger set assembles. Celia was there, escorted by Smallwood Bessemer, their differences having apparently been smoothed over, and for a while all seems to have gone well. Bessemer was an awkward and clumsy dancer, but the girl’s love enabled her to endure the way in which he jumped on and off her feet. When the music stopped, she started straightening out her toes without the slightest doubt in her mind that he was a king among men.
And then suddenly he turned to her with a kindly smile.
“I’d like to give you a bit of advice,” he said. “What’s wrong with your dancing is that you give a sort of jump at the turn, like a trout leaping at a fly. Now, the way to cure this is very simple. Try to imagine that the ceiling is very low and made of very thin glass, and that your head just touches it and you mustn’t break it. You’ve dropped your engagement ring,” he said, as something small and hard struck him on the side of the face.
“No, I haven’t,” said Celia. “I threw it at you.”
And she strode haughtily out on to the terrace. And Smallwood Bessemer, having watched her disappear, went to the bar to get a quick one.
There was only one man in the bar, and yet it looked well filled. This was because Sidney McMurdo, its occupant, is one of those vast, muscled individuals who bulge in every direction. He was sitting slumped in a chair, scowling beneath beetling brows, his whole aspect that of one whose soul has just got the sleeve across the windpipe.
Sidney was not in any sense an intimate of Smallwood Bessemer. They had met for the first time on the previous afternoon, when Bessemer had advised Sidney always to cool off slowly after playing golf, as otherwise he might contract pneumonia and cease to be with us, and Sidney, who is a second vice-president of a large insurance company, had taken advantage of this all-flesh-is-as-grass note which had been introduced into the conversation to try to sell Bessemer his firm’s all-accident policy.
No business had resulted, but the episode had served to make them acquainted, and they now split a bottle. The influence of his share on Sidney McMurdo was mellowing enough to make him confidential.
“I’ve just had a hell of a row with my fiancée,” he said.
“I’ve just had a hell of a row with my fiancée,” said Smallwood Bessemer, struck by the coincidence.
“She told me I ought to putt off the right foot. I said I was darned well going to keep right along putting off the left foot, as I had been taught at my mother’s knee. She then broke off the engagement.”
Smallwood Bessemer was not a golfer, but manlike he sympathized with the male, and he was in a mood to be impatient of exhibitions of temperament in women.
“Women,” he said, “are all alike. They need to be brought to heel. You have to teach them where they get off and show them that they can’t go about the place casting away a good man’s love as if it were a used tube of toothpaste. Let me give you a bit of advice. Don’t sit brooding in bars. Do as I intend to do. Go out and start making vigorous passes at some other girl.”
“To make her jealous?”
“Exactly.”
“So that she will come legging it back, pleading to be forgiven?”
“Precisely.”
Sidney brightened.
“That sounds pretty good to me. Because I mean to say there’s always the chance that the other girl will let you kiss her, and then you’re that much ahead of the game.”
“Quite,” said Smallwood Bessemer.
He returned to the dance room, glad to have been able to be of assistance to a fellow man in his hour of distress. Celia was nowhere to be seen, and he presumed that she was still cooling off on the terrace. He saw Sidney, who had stayed behind for a moment to finish the bottle, flash past in a purposeful way, and then he looked about him to decide who should be his assistant in the little psychological experiment which he proposed to undertake. His eyes fell on Agnes Flack, sitting in a corner, rapping her substantial foot on the floor.
Have you met Agnes Flack? You don’t remember? Then you have not, for once seen she is not forgotten. She is our female club champion, a position which she owes not only to her skill at golf but to her remarkable physique. She is a fine, large, handsome girl, built rather on the lines of Pop-Eye the Sailor, and Smallwood Bessemer, who was on the slender side, had always admired her.
He caught her eye, and she smiled brightly. He went over to where she sat, and presently they were out on the floor. He saw Celia appear at the French windows and stand looking in, and intensified the silent passion of his dancing, trying to convey the idea of being something South American, which ought to be chained up and muzzled in the interests of pure womanhood. Celia sniffed with a violence that caused the lights to flicker, and an hour or so later Smallwood Bessemer went home, well pleased with the start he had made.
He was climbing into bed, feeling that all would soon be well once more, when the telephone rang and Sidney McMurdo’s voice boomed over the wire.
“Hoy!” said Sidney.
“Yes?” said Bessemer.
“You know that advice you gave me?”
“You took it, I hope?”
“Yes,” said Sidney. “And a rather unfortunate thing has occurred. How it happened, I can’t say, but I’ve gone and got engaged.”
“Too bad,” said Bessemer sympathetically. “There was always that risk, of course. The danger on these occasions is that one may overdo the thing and become too fascinating. I ought to have warned you to hold yourself in. Who is the girl?”
“A frightful pie-faced little squirt named Celia Todd,” said Sidney and hung up with a hollow groan.
To say that this information stunned Smallwood Bessemer would scarcely be to overstate the facts. For some moments after the line had gone dead, he sat motionless, his soul seething within him like a welsh rabbit at the height of its fever. He burned with rage and resentment, and all the manhood in him called to him to make a virile gesture and show Celia Todd who was who and what was what.
An idea struck him. He called up Agnes Flack.
“Miss Flack?”
“Hello?”
“Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but will you marry me?”
“Certainly. Who is that?”
“Smallwood Bessemer.”
“I don’t get the second nam
e.”
“Bessemer. B. for banana, e for erysipelas⎯”
“Oh, Bessemer? Yes, delighted. Good night, Mr. Bessemer.”
“Good night, Miss Flack.”
Sometimes it happens that after a restorative sleep a man finds that his views on what seemed in the small hours a pretty good idea have undergone a change. It was so with Bessemer. He woke next morning oppressed by a nebulous feeling that in some way, which for the moment eluded his memory, he had made rather a chump of himself overnight. And then, as he was brushing his teeth, he was able to put his finger on the seat of the trouble. Like a tidal wave, the events of the previous evening came flooding back into his mind, and he groaned in spirit.
Why in this dark hour he should have thought of me, I cannot say, for we were the merest acquaintances. But he must have felt that I was the sort of man who would lend a sympathetic ear, for he called me up on the telephone and explained the situation, begging me to step round and see Agnes and sound her regarding her views on the matter. An hour later, I was able to put him abreast.
“She says she loves you devotedly.”
“But how can she? I scarcely know the girl.”
“That is what she says. No doubt you are one of those men who give a woman a single glance and—bing!—all is over.”
There was a silence at the other end of the wire. When he spoke again, there was an anxious tremor in his voice.
“What would you say chances were,” he asked, “for explaining that it was all a little joke, at which I had expected that no one would laugh more heartily than herself?’
“Virtually nil. As a matter of fact, that point happened to come up, and she stated specifically that if there was any rannygazoo—if, in other words, it should prove that you had been pulling her leg and trying to make her the plaything of an idle moment—she would know what to do about it.”
“Know what to do about it.”