Nothing Serious (16 page)

“Mr
Bewstridge!”

The
words, spoken in his left ear just as he was shooting, were little more than a
whisper, but they affected Horace as if an ammunition dump had exploded beneath
him. Until this moment, he had evidently been unaware of the presence of the
girl he loved, and this unexpected announcement of it caused him to putt rather
strongly.

His
club descended with a convulsive jerk, and the ball, as if feeling that now
that all that scientific nonsense was over, it knew where it was, started off
for the hole at forty miles an hour in a dead straight line. There were slopes
to the right. There were slopes to the left. It ignored them. Sizzling over the
turf, it struck the back of the cup, soared into the air like a rocket, came
down, soared up again, fell once more bounced and rebounced and finally, after
rattling round and round for perhaps a quarter of a minute, rested safe at journey’s
end. The struggle for the President’s Cup was over.

“Nice
work,” said Sir George Copstone. “Your match, what?” Horace was gazing at Vera
Witherby.

“You
spoke?” he said.

She
blushed in pretty confusion.

“It was
nothing. I only wanted to thank you.”

“Thank
me?”

“For
what you did to Aunt Lavender.”

“Me,
too,” said Sir George Copstone, who had joined them.

“Precisely
what the woman needed. Should be a turning point in her life. That’ll take her
mind off pixies for a bit.
And
beetles.”

Horace
stared at the girl. He had thought to see her shrink from him in loathing.
Instead of which, she was looking at him with something in her eyes which, if
he was not very much mistaken, was the love light.

“Vera…
Do you mean…?”

Her
eyes must have given him his answer, for he sprang forward and clasped her to
his bosom, using the interlocking grip. She nestled in his arms.

“I
misjudged you, Horace,” she whispered. “I thought you were a sap. I mistrusted
anyone who could be as fond as you seemed to be of Aunt Lavender, Uncle
Ponsford, little Irwin and Alphonse. And I had always yearned for one of those
engagements where my man, like Romeo, would run fearful risks to come near me,
and I would have to communicate with him by means of notes in hollow trees.”

“Romantic,”
explained Sir George. “Many girls are.”

Into
the ecstasy of Horace Bewstridge’s mood there crept a chilling thought. He had
won her love. He had won the President’s Cup. But, unless he had quite
misinterpreted the recent exchange of remarks between Mrs Botts and R. P.
Crumbles at the chasm side, he had lost his job and so far from being able to
support a wife, would now presumably have to starve in the gutter.

He
explained this, and Sir George Copstone pooh-poohed vehemently.

“Starve
in the gutter? Never heard such bally rot. What do you want to go starving in
gutters for? Join me, what? Come over to England, I mean to say, and accept a
prominent position in my chain of dashed stores. Name your own salary, of
course.”

Horace
reeled.

“You
don’t mean that?”

“Of
course I mean it. What do you think I meant? What other possible construction
could you have put on my words?”

“But
you don’t know what I can do.”

Sir
George stared.

“Not
know what you can do? Why, I’ve seen you in action, dash it. If what you have
just done isn’t enough to give a discerning man an idea of your capabilities,
I’d like to know what is. Ever since I went to stay at that house, I’ve wanted
to find someone capable of kicking that dog, kicking that boy, kicking old
Botts and giving Ma Botts a juicy one right on the good old spot. I’m not
merely grateful to you, my dear chap, profoundly grateful, I’m overcome with
admiration. Enormously impressed, I am. Never saw anything so adroit. What I
need in my business is a man who thinks on his feet and does it now. Ginger up
some of my branch managers a bit. Of course, you must join me, dear old thing,
and don’t forget about making the salary big. And now that’s settled, how about
trickling off to the bar and having a few? Yoicks!”

“Yoicks!”
said Horace.

“Yoicks!”
said Vera Witherby.

“Tallo-ho!”
said Sir George.

“Tallo-ho!”
said Horace.

“Tally-ho!”
said Vera Witherby.

“Tally-bally-ho!”
said Sir George, driving the thing home beyond any possibility of
misunderstanding. “Come on, let’s go.”

CHAPTER
VI

Rodney has a Relapse

THE Oldest Member, who had
been in a reverie, came out of it abruptly and began to speak with the
practised ease of a raconteur who does not require a cue to start him off on a
story. When William Bates came to me that afternoon with his tragic story (said
the Oldest Member, as smoothly as if we had been discussing William Bates,
whoever he might be, for hours), I felt no surprise that he should have
selected me as a confident. I have been sitting on the terrace of this golf club
long enough to know that that is what I am there for. Everybody with a bit of
bad news always brings it to me.

“I say,”
said William Bates.

This
William was a substantial young man constructed rather on the lines of a lorry,
and as a rule he shared that vehicle’s placid and unruffled outlook on life. He
lived mainly on chops and beer, and few things were able to disturb him. Yet,
as he stood before me now, I could see that he was all of a twitter, as far as
a fourteen-stone-six man full of beer and chops can be all of a twitter.

“I say,”
said William. “You know Rodney?”

“Your
brother-in-law, Rodney Spelvin?”

“Yes. I
believe he’s gone cuckoo.”

“What
gives you that impression?”

“Well,
look. Listen to this. We were playing our usual foursome this morning, Rodney
and Anastatia and me and Jane, a bob a corner, nip and tuck all the way around,
and at the eighteenth Jane and I were lying dead in four and Rodney had a
simple chip to reach the green in three. You get the set-up?”

I said
I got the set-up.

“Well,
knowing my sister Anastatia’s uncanny ability to hole out from anywhere within
fifteen yards of the pin, I naturally thought the thing was in the bag for
them. I said as much to Jane. ‘Jane,’ I said, ‘be ready with the stiff upper
lip. They’ve dished us.’ And I had already started to feel in my pocket for my
bob, when I suddenly saw that Rodney was picking up his ball.”

“Picking
up his ball?”

“And
what do you think his explanation was? His explanation was that in order to
make his shot he would have had to crush a daisy. ‘I couldn’t crush a daisy,’
he said. ‘The pixies would never forgive me.’ What do you make of it?”

I knew
what I made of it, but I had not the heart to tell him. I passed it off by
saying that Rodney was one of those genial clowns who will do anything for a
laugh and, William being a simple soul, my efforts to soothe him were
successful. But his story had left me uneasy and apprehensive. It seemed to me
only too certain that Rodney Spelvin was in for another attack of poetry.

I have
generally found, as I have gone through the world, that people are tolerant and
ready to forgive, and in our little community it was never held against Rodney
Spelvin that he had once been a poet and a very virulent one, too; the sort of
man who would produce a slim volume of verse bound in squashy mauve leather at
the drop of the hat, mostly on the subject of sunsets and pixies. He had said
good-bye to all that directly he took up golf and announced his betrothal to
William’s sister Anastatia.

It was
golf and the love of a good woman that saved Rodney Spelvin. The moment he had
bought his bag of clubs and signed up Anastatia Bates as a partner for life’s
medal round, he was a different man. He now wrote mystery thrillers, and with
such success that he and Anastatia and their child Timothy were enabled to live
like fighting cocks. It was impossible not to be thrilled by Rodney Spelvin,
and so skilful was the technique which he had developed that he was soon able
to push out his couple of thousand words of wholesome blood-stained fiction
each morning before breakfast, leaving the rest of the day for the normal
fifty-four holes of golf.

At
golf, too, he made steady progress. His wife, a scratch player who had once won
the Ladies’ Championship, guided him with loving care, and it was not long
before he became a skilful twenty-one and was regarded in several knowledgeable
quarters as a man to keep your eye on for the Rabbits Umbrella, a local
competition open to those with a handicap of eighteen or over.

But
smooth though the putting green of Anastatia Spelvin’s happiness was to the
casual glance, there lurked on it, I knew, a secret worm-cast. She could never
forget that the man she loved was a man with a past. Deep down in her soul
there was always the corroding fear lest at any moment a particularly fine
sunset or the sight of a rose in bud might undo all the work she had done,
sending Rodney hot-foot once more to this Theasaurus and rhyming dictionary. It
was for this reason that she always hurried him indoors when the sun began to
go down and refused to have rose trees in her garden. She was in the same
position as a wife who has married a once heavy drinker and, though tolerably
certain that he has reformed, nevertheless feels it prudent to tear out the
whisky advertisements before giving him his
Tatler.

And
now, after seven years, the blow was about to fall. Or so I felt justified in
supposing. And I could see that Anastatia thought the same. There was a drawn
look on her face, and she was watching her husband closely. Once when I was
dining at her house and a tactless guest spoke of the June moon, she changed
the subject hurriedly, but not before I had seen Rodney Spelvin start and throw
his head up like a war horse at the sound of the bugle. He recovered himself
quickly, but for an instant he had looked like a man who has suddenly awakened
to the fact that “June” rhymes with “moon” and feels that steps of some sort
ought to be taken.

A week
later suspicion became certainty. I had strolled over to William’s cottage
after dinner, as I often did, and I found him and Anastatia in the
morning-room. At a glance I could see that something was wrong. William was
practising distrait swings with a number three iron, a moody frown on his face,
while Anastatia in what seemed to me a feverish way sat knitting a sweater for
her little nephew, Braid Bates, the son of William and Jane, at the moment away
from home undergoing intensive instruction from a leading professional in
preparation for the forthcoming contest for the Children’s Cup. Both William
and Jane rightly felt that the child could not start getting the competition
spirit too soon.

Anastatia
was looking pale, and William would have been, too, no doubt, if it had been
possible for him to look pale. Years of incessant golf in all weathers had
converted his cheeks into a substance resembling red leather.

“Lovely
evening,” I said.

“Beautiful,”
replied Anastatia wildly.

“Good
weather for the crops.”

“Splendid,”
gasped Anastatia.

“And
where is Rodney?”

Anastatia
quivered all over and dropped a stitch.

“He’s
out, I think,” she said in a strange, strangled voice.

William’s
frown deepened. A plain, blunt man, he dislikes evasions.

“He is
not out,” he said curtly. “He is at his home, writing poetry. Much better to
tell him,” he added to Anastatia, who had uttered a wordless sound of protest. “You
can’t keep the thing dark, and he will be able to handle it. He has white
whiskers. A fellow with white whiskers is bound to be able to handle things
better than a couple of birds like us who haven’t white whiskers. Stands to
reason.”

I
assured them that they could rely on my secrecy and discretion and that I
would do anything that lay in the power of myself and my whiskers to assist
them in their distress.

“So
Rodney is writing poetry?” I said. “I feared that this might happen. Yes, I
think I may say I saw it coming. About pixies, I suppose?”

Anastatia
gave a quick sob and William a quick snort.

“About
pixies, you suppose, do you?” he cried. “Well, you’re wrong. If pixies were all
the trouble, I wouldn’t have a word to say. Let Rodney Spelvin come in at the
door and tell me he has written a poem about pixies, and I will clasp him in my
arms. Yes,” said William, “to my bosom. The thing has gone far, far beyond the
pixie stage. Do you know where Rodney is at this moment? Up in the nursery,
bending over his son Timothy’s cot, gathering material for a poem about the
unfortunate little rat when asleep. Some bolony, no doubt, about how he hugs
his teddy bear and dreams of angels. Yes, that is what he is doing, writing
poetry about Timothy. Horrible whimsical stuff that… Well, when I tell you
that he refers to him throughout as ‘Timothy Bobbin’, you will appreciate what
we are up against.”