The Golf Omnibus (47 page)

“That's all right,” said William, lightly. “I don't mind admitting that the same idea occurred to me. But I made judicious inquiries on the way round, and found out that the fellow's a poet. You don't seriously expect me to believe that there's any chance of Jane falling in love with a poet?”

He spoke incredulously, for there were three things in the world that he held in the smallest esteem—slugs, poets, and caddies with hiccups.

“I think it extremely possible, if not probable,” I replied.

“Nonsense!” said William. “And, besides, the man doesn't play golf. Never had a club in his hand, and says he never wants to. That's the sort of fellow he is.”

At this, I confess, I did experience a distinct feeling of relief. I could imagine Jane Packard, stimulated by exotic literature, committing many follies, but I was compelled to own that I could not conceive of her giving her heart to one who not only did not play golf but had no desire to play it. Such a man, to a girl of her fine nature
and correct upbringing, would be beyond the pale. I walked home with William in a calm and happy frame of mind.

I was to learn but one short week later that Woman is the unfathomable, incalculable mystery, the problem we men can never hope to solve.

The week that followed was one of much festivity in our village. There were dances, picnics, bathing-parties, and all the other adjuncts of high summer. In these William Bates played but a minor part. Dancing was not one of his gifts. He swung, if called upon, an amiable shoe, but the disposition in the neighbourhood was to refrain from calling upon him; for he had an incurable habit of coming down with his full weight upon his partner's toes, and many a fair girl had had to lie up for a couple of days after collaborating with him in a foxtrot.

Picnics, again, bored him, and he always preferred a round on the links to the merriest bathing-party. The consequence was that he kept practically aloof from the revels, and all through the week Jane Packard was squired by Rodney Spelvin. With Spelvin she swayed over the waxed floor; with Spelvin she dived and swam; and it was Spelvin who, with zealous hand, brushed ants off her mayonnaise and squashed wasps with a chivalrous teaspoon. The end was inevitable. Apart from anything else, the moon was at its full and many of these picnics were held at night. And you know what that means. It was about ten days later that William Bates came to me in my little garden with an expression on his face like a man who didn't know it was loaded.

“I say,” said William, “you busy?”

I emptied the remainder of the water-can on the lobelias, and was at his disposal.

“I say,” said William, “rather a rotton thing has happened. You know Jane?”

I said I knew Jane.

“You know Spelvin?”

I said I knew Spelvin.

“Well, Jane's gone and got engaged to him,” said William, aggrieved.

“What?”

“It's a fact.”

“Already?”

“Absolutely. She told me this morning. And what I want to know,” said the stricken boy, sitting down thoroughly unnerved on a basket of strawberries, “is, where do I get off?”

My heart bled for him, but I could not help reminding him that I had anticipated this.

“You should not have left them so much alone together,” I said. “You must have known that there is nothing more conducive to love than the moon in June. Why, songs have been written about it. In fact, I cannot at the moment recall a song that has not been written about it.”

“Yes, but how was I to guess that anything like this would happen?” cried William, rising and scraping strawberries off his person. “Who would ever have
supposed Jane Packard would leap off the dock with a fellow who doesn't play golf?”

“Certainly, as you say, it seems almost incredible. You are sure you heard her correctly? When she told you about the engagement, I mean. There was no chance that you could have misunderstood?”

“Not a bit of it. As a matter of fact, what led up to the thing, if you know what I mean, was me proposing to her myself. I'd been thinking a lot during the last ten days over what you said to me about that, and the more I thought of it the more of a sound egg the notion seemed. So I got her alone up at the club-house and said, ‘I say, old girl, what about it?' and she said, ‘What about what?' and I said, ‘What about marrying me? Don't if you don't want to, of course,' I said, ‘but I'm bound to say it looks pretty good to me.' And then she said she loved another—this bloke Spelvin, to wit. A nasty jar, I can tell you, it was. I was just starting off on a round, and it made me hook my putts on every green.”

“But did she say specifically that she was engaged to Spelvin?”

“She said she loved him.”

“There may be hope. If she is not irrevocably engaged the fancy may pass. I think I will go and see Jane and make tactful inquiries.”

“I wish you would,” said William. “And, I say, you haven't any stuff that'll take strawberry-juice off a fellow's trousers, have you?”

My interview with Jane that evening served only to confirm the bad news. Yes, she was definitely engaged to the man Spelvin. In a burst of girlish confidence she told me some of the details of the affair.

“The moon was shining and a soft breeze played in the trees,” she said. “And suddenly he took me in his arms, gazed deep into my eyes, and cried, ‘I love you! I worship you! I adore you! You are the tree on which the fruit of my life hangs; my mate; my woman; predestined to me since the first star shone up in yonder sky!'”

“Nothing,” I agreed, “could be fairer than that. And then?” I said, thinking how different it all must have been from William Bates's miserable, limping proposal.

“Then we fixed it up that we would get married in September.”

“You are sure you are doing wisely?” I ventured.

Her eyes opened.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, you know, whatever his other merits—and no doubt they are numerous—Rodney Spelvin does
not
play golf.”

“No, but he's very broad-minded about it.”

I shuddered. Women say these things so lightly.

“Broad-minded?”

“Yes. He has no objection to my going on playing. He says he likes my pretty enthusiasms.”

There seemed nothing more to say on that subject.

“Well,” I said, “I am sure I wish you every happiness. I had hoped, of
course—but never mind that.”

“What?”

“I had hoped, as you insist on my saying it, that you and William Bates⎯”

A shadow passed over her face. Her eyes grew sad.

“Poor William! I'm awfully sorry about that. He's a dear.”

“A splendid fellow,” I agreed.

“He has been so wonderful about the whole thing. So many men would have gone off and shot grizzly bears or something. But William just said ‘Right-o!' in a quiet voice, and he's going to caddie for me at Mossy Heath next week.”

“There is good stuff in the boy.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “If it wasn't for Rodney⎯ Oh, well!”

I thought it would be tactful to change the subject.

“So you have decided to go to Mossy Heath again?”

“Yes. And I'm really going to qualify this year.”

The annual Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath was one of the most important fixtures of our local female golfing year. As is usual with these affairs, it began with a medal-play qualifying round, the thirty-two players with the lowest net scores then proceeding to fight it out during the remainder of the week by match-play. It gratified me to hear Jane speak so confidently of her chances, for this was the fourth year she had entered, and each time, though she had started out with the brightest prospects, she had failed to survive the qualifying round. Like so many golfers, she was fifty per cent. better at match-play than at medal-play. Mossy Heath, being a championship course, is full of nasty pitfalls, and on each of the three occasions on which she had tackled it one very bad hole had undone all her steady work on the other seventeen and ruined her card. I was delighted to find her so undismayed by failure.

“I am sure you will,” I said. “Just play your usual careful game.”

“It doesn't matter what sort of a game I play this time,” said Jane, jubilantly. “I've just heard that there are only thirty-two entries this year, so that everybody who finishes is bound to qualify. I have simply got to get round somehow, and there I am.”

“It would seem somewhat superfluous in these circumstances to play a qualifying round at all.”

“Oh, but they must. You see, there are prizes for the best three scores, so they nave to play it. But isn't it a relief to know that, even if I come to grief on that beastly seventh, as I did last year, I shall still be all right?”

“It is, indeed. I have a feeling that once it becomes a matter of match-play you will be irresistible.”

“I do hope so. It would be lovely to win with Rodney looking on.”

“Will he be looking on?”

“Yes. He's going to walk round with me. Isn't it sweet of him?”

Her
fiancé's
name having slid into the conversation again, she seemed inclined to become eloquent about him. I left her, however, before she could begin. To one so strongly pro-William as myself, eulogistic prattle about Rodney Spelvin was repugnant. I disapproved entirely of this infatuation of hers. I am not a narrow-minded man; I quite appreciate the fact that non-golfers are entitled to marry; but I could not countenance their marrying potential winners of the Ladies' Invitation Tournament at Mossy Heath.

The Greens Committee, as greens committees are so apt to do in order to justify their existence, have altered the Mossy Heath course considerably since the time of which I am speaking, but they have left the three most poisonous holes untouched. I refer to the fourth, the seventh, and the fifteenth. Even a soulless Greens Committee seems to have realized that golfers, long-suffering though they are, can be pushed too far, and that the addition of even a single extra bunker to any of these dreadful places would probably lead to armed riots in the club-house.

Jane Packard had done well on the first three holes, but as she stood on the fourth tee she was conscious, despite the fact that this seemed to be one of her good days, of a certain nervousness; and oddly enough, great as was her love for Rodney Spelvin. it was not his presence that gave her courage, but the sight of William Bates's large friendly face and the sound of his pleasant voice urging her to keep her bean down and refrain from pressing.

As a matter of fact, to be perfectly truthful, there was beginning already to germinate within her by this time a faint but definite regret that Rodney Spelvin had decided to accompany her on this qualifying round. It was sweet of him to bother to come, no doubt, but still there was something about Rodney that did not seem to blend with the holy atmosphere of a championship course. He was the one romance ot her life and their souls were bound together for all eternity, but the fact remained that he did not appear to be able to keep still while she was making her shots, and his light humming, musical though it was, militated against accuracy on the green. He was humming now as she addressed her ball, and for an instant a spasm of irritation shot through her. She fought it down bravely and concentrated on her drive, and when the ball soared over the cross-bunker she forgot her annoyance. There is nothing so mellowing, so conducive to sweet and genial thoughts, as a real juicy one straight down the middle, and this was a pipterino.

“Nice work,” said William Bates, approvingly.

Jane gave him a grateful smile and turned to Rodney. It was his appreciation that she wanted. He was not a golfer, but even he must be able to see that her drive had been something out of the common.

Rodney Spelvin was standing with his back turned, gazing out over the rolling prospect, one hand shading his eyes.

“That vista there,” said Rodney. “That calm, wooded hollow, bathed in the golden sunshine. It reminds me of the island-valley of Avilion⎯”

“Did you see my drive, Rodney?”

“—where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly. Eh? Your drive? No, I didn't.”

Again Jane Packard was aware of that faint, wistful regret. But this was swept away a few moments later in the ecstasy of a perfect iron-shot which plunked her ball nicely on to the green. The last time she had played this hole she had taken seven, for all round the plateau green are sinister sand-bunkers, each beckoning the ball into its hideous depths; and now she was on in two and life was very sweet. Putting was her strong point, so that there was no reason why she should not get a snappy four on one of the nastiest holes on the course. She glowed with a strange emotion as she took her putter, and as she bent over her ball the air seemed filled with soft music.

It was only when she started to concentrate on the line of her putt that this soft music began to bother her. Then, listening, she became aware that it proceeded from Rodney Spelvin. He was standing immediately behind her, humming an old French love-song. It was the sort of old French love-song to which she could have listened for hours in some scented garden under the young May moon, but on the green of the fourth at Mossy Heath it got right in amongst her nerve-centres.

“Rodney,
please
!”

“Eh?”

Jane found herself wishing that Rodney Spelvin would not say “Eh?” whenever she spoke to him.

“Do you mind not humming?” said Jane. “I want to putt.”

“Putt on, child, putt on,” said Rodney Spelvin, indulgently. “I don't know what you mean, but, if it makes you happy to putt, putt to your heart's content.”

Jane bent over her ball again. She had got the line now. She brought back her putter with infinite care.

“My God!” exclaimed Rodney Spelvin, going off like a bomb.

Jane's ball, sharply jabbed, shot past the hole and rolled on about three yards. She spun round in anguish. Rodney Spelvin was pointing at the horizon.