She burst into tears.
“My darling!”
Mortimer ran to her and put his arms round her. She tried weakly to push him away.
“My angel! What is it?”
She sobbed brokenly. Then, with an effort, she spoke.
“Mortimer, I have deceived you!”
“Deceived me?”
“I have never played golf in my life! I don’t even know how to hold the caddie!”
Mortimer’s heart stood still. This sounded like the gibberings of an unbalanced mind, and no man likes his wife to begin gibbering immediately after the honeymoon.
“My precious! You are not yourself!”
“I am! That’s the whole trouble! I’m myself and not the girl you thought I was!”
Mortimer stared at her, puzzled. He was thinking that it was a little difficult and that, to work it out properly, he would need a pencil and a bit of paper.
“My name is not Mary!”
“But you said it was.”
“I didn’t. You asked if you could call me Mary, and I said you might, because I loved you too much to deny your smallest whim. I was going on to say that it wasn’t my name, but you interrupted me.”
“Not Mary!” The horrid truth was coming home to Mortimer. “You were not Mary Somerset?”
“Mary is my cousin. My name is Mabel.”
“But you said you had sprained your wrist playing in the championship.”
“So I had. The mallet slipped in my hand.”
“The mallet!” Mortimer clutched at his forehead. “You didn’t say ‘the mallet’?”
“Yes, Mortimer! The mallet!”
A faint blush of shame mantled her cheek, and into her blue eyes there came a look of pain, but she faced him bravely.
“I am the Ladies’ Open Croquet Champion!” she whispered.
Mortimer Sturgis cried aloud, a cry that was like the shriek of some wounded animal.
“Croquet!” He gulped, and stared at her with unseeing eyes. He was no prude, but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to be. “Croquet!”
There was a long silence. The light breeze sang in the pines above them. The grasshoppers chirruped at their feet.
She began to speak again in a low, monotonous voice.
“I blame myself! I should have told you before, while there was yet time for you to withdraw. I should have confessed this to you that night on the terrace in the moonlight. But you swept me off my feet, and I was in your arms before I realized what you would think of me. It was only then that I understood what my supposed skill at golf meant to you, and then it was too late. I loved you too much to let you go! I could not bear the thought of you recoiling from me. Oh, I was mad—mad! I knew that I could not keep up the deception for ever, that you must find me out in time. But I had a wild hope that by then we should be so close to one another that you might find it in your heart to forgive. But I was wrong. I see it now. There are some things that no man can forgive. Some things,” she repeated, dully, “which no man can forgive.”
She turned away. Mortimer awoke from his trance.
“Stop!” he cried. “Don’t go!”
“I must go.”
“I want to talk this over.”
She shook her head sadly and started to walk slowly across the sunlit grass. Mortimer watched her, his brain in a whirl of chaotic thoughts. She disappeared through the trees.
Mortimer sat down on the tee-box, and buried his face in his hands. For a time he could thing of nothing but the cruel blow he had received. This was the end of those rainbow visions of himself and her going through life side by side, she lovingly criticizing his stance and his back-swing, he learning wisdom from her. A croquet-player! He was married to a woman who hit coloured balls through hoops. Mortimer Sturgis writhed in torment. A strong man’s agony.
The mood passed. How long it had lasted, he did not know. But suddenly, as he sat there, he became once more aware of the glow of the sunshine and the singing of the birds. It was as if a shadow had lifted. Hope and optimism crept into his heart.
He loved her. He loved her still. She was part of him, and nothing that she could do had power to alter that. She had deceived him, yes. But why had she deceived him? Because she loved him so much that she could not bear to lose him. Dash it all, it was a bit of a compliment.
And, after all, poor girl, was it her fault? Was it not rather the fault of her upbringing? Probably she had been taught to play croquet when a mere child, hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. No steps had been taken to eradicate the virus from her system, and the thing had become chronic. Could she be blamed? Was she not more to be pitied than censured?
Mortimer rose to his feet, his heart swelling with generous forgiveness. The black horror had passed from him. The future seemed once more bright. It was not too late. She was still young, many years younger than he himself had been when he took up golf, and surely, if she put herself into the hands of a good specialist and practised every day, she might still hope to become a fair player. He reached the house and ran in, calling her name.
No answer came. He sped from room to room, but all were empty.
She had gone. The house was there. The furniture was there. The canary sang in its cage, the cook in the kitchen. The pictures still hung on the walls. But she had gone. Everything was at home except his wife.
Finally, propped up against the cup he had once won in a handicap competition, he saw a letter. With a sinking heart he tore open the envelope.
It was a pathetic, a tragic letter, the letter of a woman endeavouring to express all the anguish of a torn heart with one of those fountain-pens which suspend the flow of ink about twice in every three words. The gist of it was that she felt she had wronged him; that, though he might forgive, he could never forget; and that she was going away, away out into the world alone.
Mortimer sank into a chair, and stared blankly before him. She had scratched the match.
I am not a married man myself, so have had no experience of how it feels to have one’s wife whiz off silently into the unknown; but I should imagine that it must be something like taking a full swing with a brassey and missing the ball. Something, I take it, of the same sense of mingled shock, chagrin, and the feeling that nobody loves one, which attacks a man in such circumstances, must come to the bereaved husband. And one can readily understand how terribly the incident must have shaken Mortimer Sturgis. I was away at the time, but I am told by those who saw him that his game went all to pieces.
He had never shown much indication of becoming anything in the nature of a first-class golfer, but he had managed to acquire one or two decent shots. His work with the light iron was not at all bad, and he was a fairly steady putter. But now, under the shadow of this tragedy, he dropped right back to the form of his earliest period. It was a pitiful sight to see this gaunt, haggard man with the look of dumb anguish behind his spectacles taking as many as three shots sometimes to get past the ladies’ tee. His slice, of which he had almost cured himself, returned with such virulence that in the list of ordinary hazards he had now to include the tee-box. And, when he was not slicing, he was pulling. I have heard that he was known, when driving at the sixth, to get bunkered in his own caddie, who had taken up his position directly behind him. As for the deep sand-trap in front of the seventh green, he spent so much of his time in it that there was some informal talk among the members of the committee of charging him a small weekly rent.
A man of comfortable independent means, he lived during these days on next to nothing. Golf-balls cost him a certain amount, but the bulk of his income he spent in efforts to discover his wife’s whereabouts. He advertised in all the papers. He employed private detectives. He even, much as it revolted his finer instincts, took to travelling about the country, watching croquet matches. But she was never among the players. I am not sure that he did not find a melancholy comfort in this, for it seemed to s
how that, whatever his wife might be and whatever she might be doing, she had not gone right under.
Summer passed. Autumn came and went. Winter arrived. The days grew bleak and chill, and an early fall of snow, heavier than had been known at that time of the year for a long while, put an end to golf. Mortimer spent his days indoors, staring gloomily through the window at the white mantle that covered the earth.
It was Christmas Eve.
The young man shifted uneasily on his seat. His face was long and sombre.
“All this is very depressing,” he said.
“These soul tragedies,” agreed the Oldest Member, “are never very cheery.”
“Look here,” said the young man, firmly, “tell me one thing frankly, as man to man. Did Mortimer find her dead in the snow, covered except for her face, on which still lingered that faint, sweet smile which he remembered so well? Because, if he did, I’m going home.”
“No, no,” protested the Oldest Member. “Nothing of that kind.”
“You’re sure? You aren’t going to spring it on me suddenly?”
“No, no!”
The young man breathed a relieved sigh.
“It was your saying that about the white mantle covering the earth that made me suspicious.”
The Sage resumed.
It was Christmas Eve. All day the snow had been falling, and now it lay thick and deep over the countryside. Mortimer Sturgis, his frugal dinner concluded—what with losing his wife and not being able to get any golf, he had little appetite these days—was sitting in his drawing-room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon wearying of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no. It was freezing. The snow, as he tested it with his shoe, crackled crisply. The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer that the sooner he packed up and went to the South of France, the better. He was just about to close the door, when suddenly he thought he heard his own name called.
“Mortimer!”
Had he been mistaken? The voice had sounded faint and far away.
“Mortimer!”
He thrilled from head to foot. This time there could be no mistake. It was the voice he knew so well, his wife’s voice, and it had come from somewhere down near the garden-gate. It is difficult to judge distance where sounds are concerned, but Mortimer estimated that the voice had spoken about a short mashie-niblick and an easy putt from where he stood.
The next moment he was racing down the snow-covered path. And then his heart stood still. What was that dark something on the ground just inside the gate? He leaped towards it. He passed his hands over it. It was a human body. Quivering, he struck a match. It went out. He struck another. That went out, too. He struck a third, and it burnt with a steady flame; and, stooping, he saw that it was his wife who lay there, cold and stiff. Her eyes were closed, and on her face still lingered that faint, sweet smile which he remembered so well.
The young man rose with a set face. He reached for his golf-bag.
“I call that a dirty trick,” he said, “after you promised—” The Sage waved him back to his seat.
“Have no fear! She had only fainted.”
“You said she was cold.”
“Wouldn’t you be cold if you were lying in the snow?”
“And stiff.”
“Mrs. Sturgis was stiff because the train-service was bad, it being the holiday-season, and she had had to walk all the way from the junction, a distance of eight miles. Sit down and allow me to proceed.”
Tenderly, reverently, Mortimer Sturgis picked her up and began to bear her into the house. Half-way there, his foot slipped on a piece of ice and he fell heavily, barking his shin and shooting his lovely burden out on to the snow.
The fall brought her to. She opened her eyes.
“Mortimer, darling!” she said.
Mortimer had just been going to say something else, but he checked himself.
“Are you alive?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Thank God!” said Mortimer, scooping some of the snow out of the back of his collar.
Together they went into the house, and into the drawing-room. Wife gazed at husband, husband at wife. There was a silence.
“Rotten weather!” said Mortimer.
“Yes, isn’t it!”
The spell was broken. They fell into each other’s arms. And presently they were sitting side by side on the sofa, holding hands, just as if that awful parting had been but a dream.
It was Mortimer who made the first reference to it.
“I say, you know,” he said, “you oughtn’t to have nipped away like that!”
“I thought you hated me!”
“Hated you! I love you better than life itself! I would sooner have smashed my pet driver than have had you leave me!”
She thrilled at the words.
“Darling!”
Mortimer fondled her hand.
“I was just coming back to tell you that I loved you still. I was going to suggest that you took lessons from some good professional. And I found you gone!”
“I wasn’t worthy of you, Mortimer!”
“My angel!” He pressed his lips to her hair, and spoke solemnly. “All this has taught me a lesson, dearest. I knew all along, and I know it more than ever now, that it is you—you that I want. Just you! I don’t care if you don’t play golf. I don’t care⎯” He hesitated, then went on manfully. “I don’t care even if you play croquet, so long as you are with me!”
For a moment her face showed rapture that made it almost angelic. She uttered a low moan of ecstasy. She kissed him. Then she rose.
“Mortimer, look!”
“What at?”
“Me. Just look!”
The jigger which he had been polishing lay on a chair close by. She took it up. From the bowl of golf-balls on the mantelpiece she selected a brand new one. She placed it on the carpet. She addressed it. Then, with a merry cry of “Fore!” she drove it hard and straight through the glass of the china-cupboard.
“Good God!” cried Mortimer, astounded. It had been a bird of a shot.
She turned to him, her whole face alight with that beautiful smile.
“When I left you, Mortie,” she said, “I had but one aim in life, somehow to make myself worthy of you. I saw your advertisements in the papers, and I longed to answer them, but I was not ready. All this long, weary while I have been in the village of Auchtermuchtie, in Scotland, studying under Tamms McMickle.”
“Not the Tamms McMickle who finished fourth in the Open Championship of 1911, and had the best ball in the foursome in 1912 with Jock McHaggis, Andy McHeather, and Sandy McHoots!”
“Yes, Mortimer, the very same. Oh, it was difficult at first. I missed my mallet, and longed to steady the ball with my foot and use the toe of the club. Wherever there was a direction post I aimed at it automatically. But I conquered my weakness. I practised steadily. And now Mr. McMickle says my handicap would be a good twenty-four on any links.” She smiled apologetically. “Of course, that doesn’t sound much to you! You were a twelve when I left you, and now I suppose you are down to eight or something.”
Mortimer shook his head.
“Alas, no!” he replied, gravely. “My game went right off for some reason or other, and I’m twenty-four, too.”
“For some reason or other!” She uttered a cry. “Oh, I know what the reason was! How can I ever forgive myself! I have ruined your game!”
The brightness came back to Mortimer’s eyes. He embraced her fondly.
“Do not reproach yourself, dearest,” he murmured. “It is the best thing that could have happened. From now on, we start level, two hearts that beat as one, two drivers that drive as one. I could not wish it otherwise. By George! It’s just like that thing of Tennyson’s.”
He recited the lines softly:
My bride,
My wife, my life. Oh, we will walk the links
And so thro’ those dark bunkers off the course
That no man knows. Indeed, I love thee: come,
Yield thyself up: our handicaps are one;
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.
She laid her hands in his.
“And now, Mortie, darling,” she said, “I want to tell you all about how I did the long twelfth at Auchtermuchtie in one under bogey.”
6
THE SALVATION OF GEORGE MACKINTOSH
THE YOUNG MAN came into the club-house. There was a frown on his usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to bring on the hemlock.
Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had watched him with silent sympathy.
“How did you get on?” he inquired.
“He beat me.”
The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.
“You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in his youth, and crawl back at eventide looking like a toad under the harrow! He talked?”
“All the time, confound it! Put me right off my stroke.”
The Oldest Member sighed.
“The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our complex modern civilization,” he said, “and the most difficult to deal with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot . . . He is almost as bad as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you about George Mackintosh?”
“I don’t think so.”
“His,” said the Sage, “is the only case of golfing garrulity I have ever known where a permanent cure was effected. If you would care to hear about it⎯?”
George Mackintosh (said the Oldest Member), when I first knew him, was one of the most admirable young fellows I have ever met. A handsome, well-set-up man, with no vices except a tendency to use the mashie for shots which should have been made with the light iron. And as for his positive virtues, they were too numerous to mention. He never swayed his body, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a tactful grunt when his opponent foozled. And when he himself achieved a glaring fluke, his self-reproachful click of the tongue was music to his adversary’s bruised soul. But of all his virtues the one that most endeared him to me and to all thinking men was the fact that, from the start of a round to the finish, he never spoke a word except when absolutely compelled to do so by the exigencies of the game. And it was this man who subsequently, for a black period which lives in the memory of all his contemporaries, was known as Gabby George and became a shade less popular than the germ of Spanish Influenza. Truly, corruptio optimi pessima!
The Golf Omnibus Page 10
