Nothing Serious (11 page)

“I have
been waiting for you—oh, so long.”

“I’m
sorry,” said Sidney. “Am I late?”

“My
man!”

“I beg
your pardon?”

“I love
you,” explained the beautiful unknown. “Kiss me.”

If she
had studied for weeks she could not have found a better approach to Sidney
McMurdo and one more calculated to overcome any customer’s sales resistance
which might have been lurking in him. Something along these lines from a woman
something along her lines was exactly what he had been feeling he could do
with. A lover who has just got off a stuffy train to find himself discarded
like a worn out glove by the girl he has worshipped and trusted, is ripe for
treatment of this kind.

His
bruised spirit began to heal. He kissed her, as directed, and there started to
burgeon within him the thought that Agnes Flack wasn’t everybody and that it
would do her no harm to have this demonstrated to her. A heartening picture
flitted through his mind of himself ambling up to Agnes Flack with this
spectacular number on his arm, saying to her: “If you don’t want me, it would
appear that there are others who do.”

“Nice
day,” he said, to help the conversation along.

“Divine.
Hark to the wavelets, plashing on the shore. How they seem to fill one with a
sense of the inexpressibly ineffable.”

“That’s
right. They do, don’t they?”

“Are they
singing us songs of old Greece, of Triton blowing on his wreathed horn and the
sunlit loves of gods and goddesses?”

“I’m
afraid I couldn’t tell you,” said Sidney McMurdo. “I’m a stranger in these
parts myself.”

She
sighed.

“I,
too. But it is my fate to be stranger everywhere. I live a life apart; alone,
aloof, solitary, separate; wrapped up in my dreams and vision. ‘Tis ever so
with the artist.”

“You’re
a painter?”

“In
ink, not in oils. I depict the souls of men and women. I am Cora McGuffy
Spottsworth.”

The
name was new to Sidney, who seldom got much beyond the golf weeklies and the
house organ of the firm for which he worked, but he gathered that she must be a
writer of sorts and made a mental note to wire Brentano’s for her complete
output and bone it up without delay.

They
walked along in silence. At the next ice cream stand he bought her a nut
sundae, and she ate it with a sort of restrained emotion which suggested the
presence of banked-up fires, one hand wielding the spoon, the other nestling in
his like a white orchid.

Sidney
McMurdo was now right under the ether. As he sipped his sarsaparilla, his soul
seemed to heave and bubble like a Welsh rarebit coming to the boil. From
regarding this woman merely as a sort of stooge, to be exhibited to Agnes Flack
as evidence that McMurdo Preferred, even if she had seen fit to unload her
holdings, was far from being a drug in the market, he had come to look upon her
as a strong man’s mate. So that when, having disposed of the last spoonful, she
said she hoped he had not thought her abrupt just now in saying that she loved
him, he replied “Not at all, not at all,” adding that it was precisely the sort
of thing he liked to hear. It amazed him that he could ever have considered a
mere number-three-iron-swinging robot like Agnes Flack as a life partner.

“It
needs but a glance, don’t you think, to recognize one’s mate?”

“Oh,
sure.”

“Especially
if you have met and loved before. You remember those old days in Egypt?”

“Egypt?”
Sidney was a little bewildered. The town she mentioned was, he knew, in
Illinois, but he had never been there.

“In
Egypt, Antony.”

“The
name is Sidney. McMurdo, Sidney George.”

“In
your present incarnation, possibly. But once, long ago, you were Marc Antony
and I was Cleopatra.”

“Of
course, yes,” said Sidney. “It all comes back to me.”

“What
times those were. That night on the Nile!”

“Some
party.”

“I drew
Revell Carstairs in my Furnace of Sin from my memories of you in the old days.
He was tall and broad and strong, but with the heart of a child. All these
years I have been seeking for you, and now that I have found you, would you
have had me hold back and mask my love from respect for outworn fetishes of
convention?”

“You
betcher. I mean, you betcher not.”

“What
have we to do with conventions? The world would say that I have known you for a
mere half-hour—”

“Twenty-five
minutes,” said Sidney, who was rather a stickler for accuracy, consulting his
wrist-watch.

“Or
twenty-five minutes. In Egypt I was in your arms in forty seconds.”

“Quick
service.”

“That
was ever my way, direct and sudden and impulsive. I remember saying once to Mr
Spottsworth—”

Sidney
McMurdo was conscious of a quick chill, similar to that which had affected him
when Captain Jack Fosdyke had spoken of elephant guns and notches. His moral
code, improving after a rocky start in his Marc Antony days, had become rigid
and would never allow him to be a breaker-up of homes. Besides, there was his
insurance company to be considered. A scandal might mean the loss of his second
vice-presidency.

“Mr
Spottsworth?” he echoed, his jaw falling a little. “Is there a Mr Spottsworth?”

“Not
now. He has left me.”

“The
low hound.”

“He had
no option. Double pneumonia. By now, no doubt, he has been reincarnated, but
probably only as a jellyfish. A jellyfish need not come between us.”

“Certainly
not,” said Sidney McMurdo, speaking warmly, for he had once been stung by one,
and they resumed their saunter.

Agnes
Flack, meanwhile, though basking in the rays of Captain Jack Fosdyke, had by no
means forgotten Sidney McMurdo. In the days that followed their painful
interview, in the intervals of brushing up her fifty yards from the pin game in
preparation for the Women’s Singles contest which was shortly to take place,
she found her thoughts dwelling on him quite a good deal. A girl who has loved,
even if mistakenly, can never be indifferent to the fortunes of the man whom
she once regarded as the lode star of her life. She kept wondering how he was
making out, and hoped that his vacation was not being spoiled by a broken
heart.

The
first time she saw him, accordingly, she should have been relieved and pleased.
He was escorting Cora McGuffy Sports-worth along the boardwalk, and it was
abundantly obvious even from a casual glance that if his heart had ever been
broken, there had been some adroit work done in the repair shop. Clark Gable
could have improved his technique by watching the way he bent over Cora McGuffy
Spottsworth and stroked her slender arm. He also, while bending and stroking,
whispered into her shell-like ear, and you could see that what he was saying
was good stuff. His whole attitude was that of a man who, recognizing that he
was on a good thing, was determined to push it along.

But
Agnes Flack was not relieved and pleased; she was disturbed and concerned. She
was perhaps a hard judge, but Cora McGuffy Spottsworth looked to her like the
sort of woman who goes about stealing the plans of forts—or, at the best,
leaning back negligently on a settee and saying “Prince, my fan”. The impression
Agnes formed was of something that might be all right stepping out of a pie at
a bachelor party, but not the type you could take home to meet mother.

Her
first move, therefore, on encountering Sidney at the golf club one morning, was
to institute a probe.

“Who,”
she demanded, not beating about the bush, “was that lady I saw you walking down
the street with?”

Her
tone, in which he seemed to detect the note of criticism, offended Sidney.

“That,”
he replied with a touch of hauteur, “was no lady, that was
my fiancée.”

Agnes reeled.
She had noticed that he was wearing a new tie and that his hair had been
treated with Sticko, the pomade that satisfies, but she had not dreamed that
matters had proceeded as far as this.

“You
are engaged?”

“And
how!”

“Oh,
Sidney!”

He
stiffened.

“That
will be all of that ‘Oh, Sidney!’ stuff,” he retorted with spirit. “I don’t see
what you have to beef about. You were offered the opportunity of a merger, and
when you failed to take up your option I was free, I presume, to open
negotiations elsewhere. As might have been foreseen, I was snapped up the
moment it got about that I was in the market.”

Agnes
Flack bridled.

“I’m
not jealous.”

“Then
what’s your kick?”

“It’s
just that I want to see you happy.”

“I am.”

“How
can you be happy with a woman who looks like a snake with hips?”

“She
has every right to look like a snake with hips. In a former incarnation she
used to be Cleopatra. I,” said Sidney McMurdo, straightening his tie, “was
Antony.”

“Who
told you that?”

“She
did. She has all the facts.”

“She
must be crazy.”

“Not at
all. I admit that for a while at our first meeting some such thought did cross
my mind, but the matter is readily explained. She is a novelist. You may have
heard of Cora McGuffy Spottsworth?”

Agnes
uttered a cry.

“What?
Oh, she can’t be.”

“She
has documents to prove it.”

“But
Sidney, she’s awful. At my school two girls were expelled because they were
found with her books under their pillows. Her publisher’s slogan is ‘Spottsworth
for Blushes’. You can’t intend to marry a woman who notoriously has to write
her love scenes on asbestos.”

“Well,
what price your intending to marry a prominent international plug-ugly who
thinks nothing of shooting people with elephant guns?”

“Only
African chiefs.”

“African
chiefs are also God’s creatures.”

“Not
when under the influence of trade gin, Jack says. He says you have to shoot
them with elephant guns then, It means nothing more, he says, than if you drew
their attention to some ruling by Emily Post. Besides, he knows Bobby Jones.”

“So
does Bobby Jones’s grocer. Does he play golf himself? That’s the point.”

“He
plays beautifully.”

“So
does Cora. She expects to win the Women’s Singles.”

Agnes
drew herself up haughtily. She was expecting to win the Women’s Singles
herself.

“She
does, does she?”

“Yes,
she does.”

“Over
my dead body.”

“That
would be a mashie niblick shot,” said Sydney McMurdo thoughtfully. “She’s
wonderful with her mashie niblick.”

With a
powerful effort Agnes Flack choked down her choler.

“Well,
I hope it will be all right,” she said.

“Of course
it will be all right. I’m about the luckiest man alive.”

“In any
case, it’s fortunate that we found out our mistake in time.”

“I’ll
say so. A nice thing it would have been, if all this had happened after we were
married. We should have had one of those situations authors have to use a row
of dots for.”

“Yes.
Even if we had been married, I should have flown to Jack.”

“And I
should have flown to Cora.”

“He
once killed a lion with a sardine opener.”

“Cora
once danced with the Duke of Windsor,” said Sidney McMurdo, and with a proud
tilt of the chin, went off to give his betrothed lunch.

As a
close student of the game of golf in all its phases over a considerable number
of years, I should say that Women’s Singles at fashionable seashore resorts
nearly always follow the same general lines. The participants with a reasonable
hope of bringing home the bacon seldom number more than three or four, the rest
being the mere dregs of the golfing world who enter for the hell of the thing
or because they know they look well in sports clothes. The preliminary rounds,
accordingly, are never worth watching or describing. The rabbits eliminate each
other with merry laughs and pretty squeals, and the tigresses massacre the
surviving rabbits, till by the time the semi-final is reached, only grim-faced
experts are left in.

It was
so with the tourney this year at East Bampton. Agnes had no difficulty in
murdering the four long handicap fluffies with whom she was confronted in the
early stages, and entered the semi-final with the feeling that the competition
proper was now about to begin.

Watching,
when opportunity offered, the play of the future Mrs Sidney McMurdo, who also
had won through to the penultimate round, she found herself feeling a little
easier in her mind. Cora McGuffy Spottsworth still looked to her like one of
those women who lure men’s souls to the shoals of sin, but there was no
question that, as far as knowing what to do with a number four iron when you
put it into her hands, was concerned, she would make a good wife. Her
apprehensions regarding Sidney’s future were to a certain extent relieved.