It seemed to me, too, an excellent sign that he was all impatience to renew the contest. He asked Stocker with some brusqueness if he proposed to spend the rest of the day in the bar, and Stocker hastily drained his second ginger ale and Sneezo and we went out.
As we were making our way to the tenth tee, little Timothy suddenly appeared from nowhere, gambolling up in an arch way like a miniature chorus-boy, and I saw at once what Jane had meant when she had spoken of him putting on an act. There was a sort of ghastly sprightliness about the child. He exuded whimsicality at every pore.
“Daddee,” he called, and Rodney looked round a little irritably, it seemed to me, like one interrupted while thinking of higher things.
“Daddee, I’ve made friends with such a nice beetle.”
It was a remark which a few days earlier would have had Rodney reaching for his note-book with a gleaming eye, but now he was plainly distrait. There was an absent look on his face, and watching him swing his driver one was reminded of a tiger of the jungle lashing its tail.
“Quite,” was all he said.
“It’s green. I call it Mister Green Beetle.”
This idiotic statement—good, one would have thought, for at least a couple of stanzas—seemed to arouse little or no enthusiasm in Rodney. He merely nodded curtly and said “Yes, yes, very sensible”.
“Run away and have a long talk with it,” he added.
“What about?”
“Why—er—other beetles.”
“Do you think Mister Green Beetle has some dear little brothers and sisters, Daddee?”
“Extremely likely. Good-bye. No doubt we shall meet later.”
“I wonder if the Fairy Queen uses beetles as horses, Daddee?”
“Very possibly, very possibly. Go and make inquiries. And you,” said Rodney, addressing his cowering caddy, “if I hear one more hiccough out of you while I am shooting—just one—I shall give you two minutes to put your affairs in order and then I shall act. Come on, Stocker, come on, come on, come on. You have the honour.”
He looked at his opponent sourly, like one with a grievance, and I knew what was in his mind. He was wondering where this hay fever of Stocker’s was, of which he had heard so much.
I could not blame him. A finalist in a golf tournament, playing against an antagonist who has been widely publicized as a victim to hay fever, is entitled to expect that the latter will give at least occasional evidence of his infirmity, and so far Joseph Stocker had done nothing of the kind. From the start of the proceedings he had failed to foozle a single shot owing to a sudden sneeze, and what Rodney was feeling was that while this could not perhaps actually be described as sharp practice, it was sailing very near the wind.
The fact of the matter was that the inventor of Sneezo knew his stuff. A quick-working and harmless specific highly recommended by the medical fraternity and containing no deleterious drugs, it brought instant relief. Joe Stocker had been lowering it by the pailful since breakfast, and it was standing him in good stead. I have fairly keen ears, but up to now I had not heard him even sniffle. He played his shots dry-eyed and without convulsions, and whatever holes Rodney had won he had had to win by sheer unassisted merit.
There was no suggestion of the hay fever patient as he drove off now. He smote his ball firmly and truly, and it would un-questionably 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 an 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 if 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 Bate
s, 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.”
CHAPTER VII
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 accompanied 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.
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