Agnes was gulping like one of those peculiar fish you catch down in Florida.
“Then you are free?”
“And glad of it. What I ever saw in the woman beats me. But what good is that, when I have lost you?”
“But you haven’t.”
“Pardon me. What about your Fosdyke?”
“I’ve just broken my engagement, too. Oh, Sidney, let’s go right off and get married under an arch of niblicks before we make any more of these unfortunate mistakes. Let me tell you how that Fosdyke false alarm behaved.”
In molten words she began to relate her story, but she had not proceeded far when she was obliged to stop, for Sidney McMurdo’s strong arms were about her and he was crushing her to his bosom. And when Sidney McMurdo crushed girls to his bosom, they had to save their breath for breathing purposes, inhaling and exhaling when and if they could.
27
EXCELSIOR
ALFRED JUKES AND Wilberforce Bream had just holed out at the end of their match for the club championship, the latter sinking a long putt to win, and the young man sitting with the Oldest Member on the terrace overlooking the eighteenth green said that though this meant a loss to his privy purse of ten dollars, his confidence in Jukes remained unimpaired. He still considered him a better golfer than Bream.
The Sage nodded without much enthusiasm.
“You may be right,” he agreed. “But I would not call either of them a good golfer.”
“They’re both scratch.”
“True. But it is not mere technical skill that makes a man a good golfer, it is the golfing soul. These two have not the proper attitude of seriousness towards the game. Jukes once returned to the club-house in the middle of a round because there was a thunderstorm and his caddie got struck by lightning, and I have known Bream to concede a hole for the almost frivolous reason that he had sliced his ball into a hornet’s nest and was reluctant to play it where it lay. This was not the Bewstridge spirit.”
“The what spirit?”
“The spirit that animated Horace Bewstridge, the finest golfer I have ever known.”
“Was he scratch?”
“Far from it. His handicap was twenty-four. But though his ball was seldom in the right place, his heart was. When I think what Horace Bewstridge went through that day he battled for the President’s Cup, I am reminded of the poem, Excelsior, by the late Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with which you are doubtless familiar.”
“I used to recite it as a child.”
“I am sorry I missed the treat,” said the Oldest Member courteously. “Then you will recall how its hero, in his struggle to reach the heights, was laid stymie after stymie, and how in order to achieve his aim, he had to give up all idea of resting his head upon the maiden’s breast, though cordially invited to do so. A tear, if you remember, stood in his bright blue eye, but with a brief ‘Excelsior!’ he intimated that no business could result. Virtually the same thing that happened to Horace Bewstridge.”
“You know,” said the young man, “I’ve always thought that Excelsior bird a bit of a fathead. I mean to say, what was there in it for him? As far as I can make out, just the walk.”
“Suppose he had been trying to win his first cup?”
“I don’t recollect anything being said about any cup. Do they give cups for climbing mountains ‘mid snow and ice?”
“We are getting a little muddled,” said the Oldest member. “You appear to be discussing the youth with the banner and the clarion voice, while I am talking about Horace Bewstridge. It may serve to clear the air and disperse the fog of misunderstanding if I tell you the latter’s story. And in order that you shall miss none of the finer shades, I must begin by dwelling upon his great love for Vera Witherby.”
It was only after the thing had been going on for some time (said the Oldest Member) that I learned of this secret romance in Horace’s life. As a rule, the Romeos who live about here are not backward in confiding in me when they fall in love. Indeed, I sometimes feel that I shall have to begin keeping them off with a stick. But Bewstridge was reticent. It was purely by chance that I became aware of his passion.
One rather breezy morning, I was sitting almost exactly where we are sitting now, thinking of this and that, when I observed fluttering towards me across the terrace a sheet of paper. It stopped against my foot, and I picked it up and read its contents. They ran as follows: —
MEM
OLD B. Ribs. But watch eyes.
MA B. Bone up on pixies. Flowers. Insects.
I. Symp. breeziness.
A. Concil. If poss. p., but w.o. for s.d.a.
That was all, and I studied it with close attention and, I must confess, a certain amount of alarm. There had been a number of atom-bomb spy scares in the papers recently, and it occurred to me that this might be a secret code, possibly containing information about some local atoms.
It was then that I saw Horace Bewstridge hurrying towards me. He appeared agitated.
“Have you seen a piece of paper?” he asked.
“Would this be it?”
He took it, and seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“I suppose you’re wondering what it’s all about?”
I admitted to a certain curiosity, and he hesitated again. Then there crept into his eyes the look which I have seen so often in the eyes of young men. I saw that he was about to confide in me. And presently out it all came, like beer from a bottle. He was in love with Vera Witherby, the niece of one Ponsford Botts, a resident in the neighbourhood.
In putting it like that, I am giving you the thing in condensed form, confining myself to the gist. Horace Bewstridge was a little long-winded about it all, going rather deeply into his emotions and speaking at some length about her eyes, which he compared to twin stars. It was several minutes before I was able to enquire how he was making out.
“Have you told your love?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Horace Bewstridge. “I goggle a good deal, but for the present am content to leave it at that. You see, I’m working this thing on a system. All the nibs will tell you that everything is done by propaganda nowadays, and that your first move, if you want to get anywhere, must be to rope in a bloc of friendly neutrals. I start, accordingly, by making myself solid with the family. I give them the old salve, get them rooting for me, and thus ensure an impressive build-up. Only then do I take direct action and edge into what you might call the blitzkrieg. This paper contains notes for my guidance.”
“With reference to administering the salve?”
“Exactly.”
I took the document from him, and glanced at it again.
“What,” I asked, “does ‘Old B. Ribs. But watch eyes’ signify?”
“Quite simple. Old Botts tells dialect stories about Irishmen named Pat and Mike, and you laugh when he prods you in the ribs. But sometimes he doesn’t prod you in the ribs, merely stands there looking pop-eyed. One has to be careful about that.”
“Under the heading ‘Ma B.’, I see you say: ‘Bone up on pixies.’ You add the words ‘flowers’ and ‘insects’.”
“Yes. All that is vitally important. Mrs. Botts, I am sorry to say, is a trifle on the whimsy side. Perhaps you have read her books? They are three in number—My Chums the Pixies, How to Talk to the Flowers, and Many of My Best Friends are Mosquitoes. The programme calls for a good working knowledge of them all.”
“Who is ‘I’, against whose name you have written the phrase: ‘Symp. breeziness’?”
“That is little Irwin Botts, the son of the house. He is in love with Dorothy Lamour, and not making much of a go of it. He talks to me about her, and I endeavour to be breezily sympathetic.”
“And ‘A’?”
“Their poodle, Alphonse. The note is to remind me to conciliate him. He is a dog of wide influence, and cannot be ignored.”
“‘I poss., p., but w.o. for s.d.a.’?”
“If possible, pat, but watch out for sudden dash at ankles. He is extraordinarily quic
k on his feet.”
I handed back the paper.
“Well,” I said, “it all seems a little elaborate, and I should have thought better results would have been obtained by having a direct pop at the girl, but I wish you luck.”
In the days which followed, I kept a watchful eye on Horace, for his story had interested me strangely. Now and then, I would see him pacing the terrace with Ponsford Botts at his side and catch references to Pat and Mike, together with an occasional “Begorrah,” and I noted how ringing was his guffaw as the other suddenly congealed with bulging eyes.
Once, as I strolled along the road, I heard a noise like machine-gun fire and turned the corner to find him slapping little Irwin’s shoulder in a breezy, elder-brotherly manner. His pockets were generally bulging with biscuits for Alphonse, and from time to time he would come and tell me how he was getting along with Mrs. Botts’s books. These, he confessed, called for all that he had of resolution and fortitude, but he told me that he was slowly mastering their contents and already knew a lot more about pixies than most people.
It would all have been easier, he said, if he had been in a position to be able to concentrate his whole attention upon them. But of course he had his living to earn and could not afford to neglect his office work. He held a subordinate post in the well-known firm of R. P. Crumbles Inc., purveyors of Silver Sardines (The Sardine with A Soul), and R. P. Crumbles was a hard taskmaster. And, in addition to this, he had entered for the annual handicap competition known as the President’s Cup.
It was upon this latter topic, as the date of the tourney drew near, that he spoke almost as frequently and eloquently as upon the theme of his love. He had been playing golf, it appeared, for some seven years, and up till now had never come within even measurable distance of winning a trophy. Generally, he said, it was his putting that dished him. But recently, as the result of reading golf books, he had adopted a super-scientific system, and was now hoping for the best.
It was a stimulating experience to listen to his fine, frank enthusiasm. He spoke of the President’s Cup as some young knight of King Arthur’s Round Table might have spoken of the Holy Grail. And it was consequently with peculiar satisfaction that I noted his success in the early rounds. Step by step, he won his way into the semi-finals in his bracket, and was enabled to get triumphantly through that critical test owing to the fortunate circumstance of his opponent tripping over a passing cat on the eve of the match and spraining his ankle.
Many members of the club would, of course, have been fully competent to defeat Horace Bewstridge if they had sprained both ankles, or even broken both arms, but Mortimer Gooch, his antagonist, was not one of these. He scratched, and Horace walked over into the final.
His chances now, it seemed to me, were extremely good. According to how the semi-final in the other bracket went, he would be playing either Peter Willard, who would be as clay in his hands, or a certain Sir George Copstone, a visiting Englishman whom his employer, R. P. Crumbles, had put up for the club, and who by an odd coincidence was residing as a guest at the house of Ponsford Botts. I had watched this hand across the sea in action, and was convinced that Horace, provided he did not lose his nerve, could trim him nicely.
A meeting on the fifteenth green the afternoon before the match enabled me to convey these views to the young fellow. We were there to watch the finish of the opposition semi-final, and when Sir George Copstone had won this, I linked by arm in Horace’s and told him that in my opinion the thing was in the bag.
“If Peter Willard, our most outstanding golfing cripple, can take this man to the fifteenth, your vidory should be a certainty.
“Peter was receiving thirty-eight.”
“You could give him fifty. What is this Copstone? A twenty-four like yourself, is he not?”
“Yes.”
“Then you need feel no anxiety, my boy,” I said, for when I give a pep talk I like it to be a pep talk. “If you are not too busy to-night reading about pixies, you might be looking around your living-room for a spot to put that cup.”
He snorted devoutly, and I think he was about to burst into one of those ecstatic monologues of his, but at this moment we reached the terrace. And, as we did so, a harsh, metallic voice called his name, and I perceived, standing at some little distance, a beetle-browed man of formidable aspect, who looked like a cartoon of capital in a Labour paper. He was smoking a large cigar, with which he beckoned to Horace Bewstridge imperiously, and Horace, leaving my side, ambled up to him like a spaniel. From the fact that, as he ambled, he was bleating “Oh, good evening, Mr. Crumbles. Yes, Mr. Crumbles. I’m coming, Mr. Crumbles,” I deduced that this was the eminent sardine fancier who provided him with his weekly envelope.
Their conversation was not an extended one. R. P. Crumbles spoke rapidly and authoritatively for some moments, emphasising his remarks with swift, captain-of-industry prods at Horace’s breast-bone, and then he turned on his heel and strode off in a strong, economic royalist sort of way, and Horace came back to where I stood.
Now, I had noticed once or twice during the interview that the young fellow had seemed to totter on his axis, and as he drew nearer, his pallid face, with its staring eyes and drooping jaw, told me that all was not well.
“That was my boss,” he said, in a low, faint voice.
“So I had guessed. Why did he call the conference?”
Horace Bewstridge beat his breast.
“It’s about Sir George Copstone.”
“What about him?”
Horace Bewstridge clutched his hair.
“Apparently this Copstone runs a vast system of chain stores throughout the British Isles, and old Crumbles has been fawning on him ever since his arrival in the hope of getting him to take on the Silver Sardine and propagate it over there. He says that this is a big opportunity for the dear old firm and that it behoves all of us to do our bit and push it along. So⎯”
“So⎯?”
Horace Bewstridge rent his pullover.
“So,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’ve got to play Customer’s Golf to-morrow and let the man win that cup.”
“Horace!” I cried.
I would have seized his hand and pressed it, but it was not there. Horace Bewstridge had left me. All that my eye encountered was a swirl of dust and his flying form disappearing in the direction of the bar. I understood and sympathized. There are moments in the life of every man when human consolation cannot avail and only two or three quick ones will meet the case.
I did not see him again until we met next afternoon on the first tee for the start of the final.
You, being a newcomer here (said the Oldest Member) may possibly have formed an erroneous impression regarding this President’s Cup of which I have been speaking. Its name, I admit, is misleading, suggesting as it does the guerdon of some terrific tourney battled for by the cream of the local golfing talent. One pictures perspiring scratch men straining every nerve and history being made by amateur champions.
As a matter of fact, it is open for competition only to those whose handicap is not lower than twenty-four, and excites little interest outside the ranks of the submerged tenth who play for it. As a sporting event on our fixture list, as I often have to explain, it may be classed somewhere between the Grandmothers’ Umbrella and the All day Sucker competed for by children who have not passed their seventh year.
The final, accordingly, did not attract a large gate. In fact, I think I was the only spectator. I was thus enabled to obtain an excellent view of the contestants and to follow their play to the best advantage. And, as on the previous occasions when I had watched him perform, I found myself speculating with no little bewilderment as to how Horace’s opponent had got that way.
Sir George Copstone was one of those tall, thin, bony Englishmen who seem to have been left over from the eighteen-sixties. He did not actually wear long side-whiskers of the type known as Piccadilly Weepers, nor did he really flaunt a fore-and-aft deer-stalker cap of the type affected b
y Sherlock Holmes, but you got the illusion that this was so, and it was partly the unnerving effect of his appearance on his opponents that had facilitated his making his way into the final. But what had been the basic factor in his success was his method of play.
A deliberate man, this Copstone. Before making a shot, he would inspect his enormous bag of clubs and take out one after another, slowly, as if he were playing spillikens. Having at length made his selection, he would stand motionless beside his ball, staring at it for what seemed an eternity. Only after one had begun to give up hope that life would ever again animate the rigid limbs, would he start his stroke. He was affectionately known on our links as The Frozen Horror.
Even in normal circumstances, a sensitive, highly-strung young man like Horace Bewstridge might well have found himself hard put to it to cope with such an antagonist. And when you take into consideration the fact that he had received those special instructions from the front office, it is not surprising that he should have failed in the opening stages of the encounter to give of his best. The fourth hole found him four down, and one had the feeling that he was lucky not to be five.
At this point, however, there occurred one of those remarkable changes of fortune which are so common in golf and which make it the undisputed king of games. Teeing up at the fifth, Sir George Copstone appeared suddenly to have become afflicted with some form of shaking palsy. Where before he had stood addressing his ball like Lot’s wife just after she had been turned into a pillar of salt, he now wriggled like an Ouled Nail dancer in the throes of colic. Nor did his condition improve as the match progressed. His movements took on an ever freerer abandon. To cut a long story short, which I am told is a thing I seldom do, he lost four holes in a row, and they came to the ninth all square.
The Golf Omnibus Page 55
