“Frederick,”
proceeded the Bod, “Mavis has been telling me a most unpleasant story.”
Freddie
hardly knew what to say to this. He was just throwing a few sentences together
in his mind about the modern girl being sound at heart despite her freedom of
speech, and how there isn’t really any harm in it if she occasionally gets off
one from the smoking room—tolerant, broad-minded stuff, if you know what I
mean—when old Bodsham resumed.
“She
tells me you have become entangled with a young woman with golden hair.”
“A fat
young woman with golden hair,” added Mavis, specifying more exactly.
Freddie
waved his arms passionately, like a semaphore.
“Nothing
in it,” he cried. “Nothing whatever. The whole thing greatly exaggerated.
Mavis,” he said, “I am surprised and considerably pained. I should have thought
that you would have had more trust in me. Kind hearts are more than coronets
and simple faith than Norman blood,” he went on, for he had always remembered
that gag after having to write it out two hundred times at school for loosing
off a stink bomb in the form-room. “I told you she was a total stranger.”
“Then
how does it happen that you were driving her through the streets of Bramley in
your car this morning?” said old Bedsham.
“Yes,”
said Mavis. “That is what I want to know.”
“It is
a point,” said old Bodsham, “upon which we would both be glad to receive
information.”
Catch
Freddie at a moment like this, and you catch him at his best. His heart,
leaping from its moorings, had loosened one of his front teeth, but there was
absolutely nothing in his manner to indicate it. His eyes, as he stared at them,
were those of a spotless bimbo cruelly wronged by a monstrous accusation.
“Me?”
he said incredulously.
“You,”
said old Bodsham.
“I saw
you myself,” said Mavis.
I doubt
if there is another member of this club who could have uttered at this juncture
the light, careless laugh that Freddie did.
“What
an extraordinary thing,” he said. “One can only suppose that there must be
somebody in this resort who resembles me so closely in appearance that the
keenest eye is deceived. I assure you, Bod—I mean, Lord Bodsham—and you,
Mavis—that my morning has been far too full to permit of my giving joy rides to
blondes, even if the mere thought of doing so wouldn’t have sickened me to the
very soul. The idea having crossed my mind that little Wilfred would appreciate
it, I went to St. Asaph’s to ask the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn to give the school a
half-holiday. I want no thanks, of course. I merely mention the matter to show
how ridiculous this idea of yours is that I was buzzing about with blondes in
my two-seater. The Rev. Aubrey will tell you that I was in conference with him
for the dickens of a time. After which, I was in conference with my friend,
Bingo Little. And after that I came here.”
There
was a silence.
“Odd,”
said the Bod.
“Very
odd,” said Mavis.
They
were plainly rattled. And Freddie was just beginning to have that feeling, than
which few are pleasanter, of having got away with it in the teeth of fearful
odds, when the revolving door of the hotel moved as if impelled by some
irresistible force, and through it came a bulging figure in mauve, surmounted
by golden hair. Reading from left to right, the substantial blonde.
“Coo!”
she exclaimed, sighting Freddie. “There you are, ducky! Excuse me half a jiff,”
she added to Mavis and the Bod, who had rocked back on their heels at the sight
of her, and she linked her arm in Freddie’s and drew him aside.
“I hadn’t
time to thank you before,” she said. “Besides being too out of breath. Papa is
very nippy on his feet, and it takes it out of a girl, trying to dodge a fork
handle. What luck finding you here like this. My gentleman friend and I were
married at the registrar’s just after I left you, and we’re having the wedding
breakfast here. And if it hadn’t been for you, there wouldn’t have been a
wedding breakfast. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
And, as
if feeling that actions speak louder than words, she flung her arms about
Freddie and kissed him heartily. She then buzzed off to the ladies’ room to
powder her nose, leaving Freddie rooted to the spot.
He didn’t,
however, remain rooted long. After one quick glance at Mavis and old Bodsham,
he was off like a streak to the nearest exit. That glance, quick though it had
been, had shown him that this was the end. The Bod was looking at Mavis, and
Mavis was looking at the Bod. And then they both turned and looked at him, and
there was that in their eyes which told him, as I say, that it was the finish.
Good explainer though he is, there were some things which he knew he could not
explain, and this was one of them.
That is
why, if our annual tournament had been held this year at Bramley-on- Sea, you
would not have found Frederick Widgeon in the ranks, playing to his handicap of
twenty-four. He makes no secret of the fact that he is permanently through with
Bramley-on-Sea. If it wants to brace anybody, let it jolly well brace somebody
else, about sums up what he feels.
CHAPTER
III
Up from the Depths
AS the Oldest Member stood
chaffing with his week-end guest on the terrace overlooking the ninth green,
there came out of the club-house a girl of radiant beauty who, greeting the
Sage cordially drew his attention to the bracelet on her shapely arm.
“Isn’t
it lovely!” she said. “Ambrose gave it me for my birthday.”
She
passed on, and the guest heaved a moody sigh.
“Once
again!” he said. “I’ve never known it to fail. What on earth is the good of
Nature turning out girls like that, seeing that before an honest man can put in
his bid they have always gone and got an Ambrose attached to them? Or if not an
Ambrose, a Jim or a Tim or a Fred or a Ned or a Mike or a Spike or a Percival.
Sometimes I think I shall go into a monastery and get away from it all.”
“You
admired my little friend?”
“She is
what the doctor ordered.”
“It is
odd that you should say that, for she is what the doctor got. She is the wife
of our local medicine man, Ambrose Gussett.”
“I’ll
bet he isn’t worthy of her.”
“On the
contrary. You might say that he married beneath him. He is a scratch, she a
mere painstaking eighteen. But then we must remember that until shortly before
her marriage she had never touched a golf club. She was a tennis player,” said
the Oldest Member, wincing. A devout golfer from the days of the gutty ball,
his attitude towards exponents of the rival game had always resembled that of
the early Christians towards the Ebionites.
“Well,
anyway,” said the guest. “I’m glad he remembers her birthday.”
“He
will always do so. That is one date which is graven on his memory in letters of
brass. The time may come when in an absent-minded moment Ambrose Gussett will forget
to pronate the wrists and let the club head lead, but he will never forget his wife’s
birthday. And I’ll tell you why,” said the Oldest Member, securing his
companion’s attention by digging him in the lower ribs with the handle of a
putter.
Ambrose
Gussett (the Sage proceeded) had been a member of our little community for some
months before Evangeline Tewkesbury came into his life. We all liked Ambrose
and wished him well. He was a pleasant clean-cut young fellow with frank blue
eyes and an easy swing, and several of our Society matrons with daughters on
their hands were heard to express a regret that he should remain a bachelor.
Attempts
to remedy this, however, had come to nothing. Like so many young doctors with
agreeable manners and frank blue eyes, Ambrose Gussett continued to be an
iodoform-scented butterfly flitting from flower to flower but never resting on
any individual bloom long enough to run the risk of having to sign on the
dotted line.
And
then Evangeline Tewkesbury arrived on a visit to her aunt, Miss Martha
Tewkesbury, and he fell for her with a thud which you could have heard in the
next county.
It
generally happens around these parts that young men who fall in love look me up
in my favourite chair on this terrace in order to obtain sympathy and advice as
to how to act for the best. Ambrose Gussett was no exception. Waking from a
light doze one evening, I perceived him standing before me, scratching his chin
coyly with a number three iron.
“I love
her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” said Ambrose Gussett, getting down to
it without preamble. “When in her presence I note a marked cachexia. My
temperature goes up, and a curious burning is accompanied by a well-marked
yearning. There are floating spots before my eyes, and I am conscious of an
overpowering urge to clasp her in my arms and cry ‘My mate!’”
“You
are speaking of—?”
“Didn’t
I mention that? Evangeline Tewkesbury.”
“Good
God!”
“What
do you mean?”
I felt
it best to be frank.
“My
dear Ambrose, I am sorry to give you pain, but Miss Tewkesbury is a tennis
player. I have seen her with my own eyes leaping about the court shouting ‘Forty
love,’ ‘Thirty all’ and similar obscenities.”
He
astounded me by receiving my words with a careless nod.
“Yes,
she told me she played tennis.”
“And you
still love her?”
“Of
course I still love her.”
“But,
Ambrose, reflect. A golfer needs a wife, true. It is essential that he has a
sympathetic listener always handy, to whom he can relate the details of the day’s
play. But what sort of a life companion would a tennis player be?”
He
sighed ecstatically.
“Just
let me get this tennis player as a life companion, and you won’t find me
beefing. I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her, I love her,” said
Ambrose Gussett, summing up.
A few
days later I found him beside my chair once more. His clean-cut face was grave.
“Say,
listen,” he said. “You know that great love of mine?”
“Ah,
yes. How is it coming along?”
“Not
too well. Every time I call at her home, I find her festooned in tennis
players.”
“Her
natural mates. Female tennis players always marry male tennis players, poor
souls. Abandon this mad enterprise, Ambrose,” I pleaded, “and seek for some
sweet girl with a loving disposition and a low handicap.”
“I won’t.
My stethoscope is still in the ring. I don’t care if these germs are her
natural mates. I defy them. Whatever the odds, however sticky the going, I
shall continue to do my stuff. But, as I say, the course is heavily trapped and
one will need to be at the top of one’s form. Looking over the field, I think
my most formidable rival is a pin-headed string bean of a fellow named Dwight
Messmore. You know him?”
“By
sight. She would naturally be attracted by him. I believe he is very expert at
this outdoor ping-pong.”
“In the
running for a place in the Davis Cup team, they tell me.”
“What
is the Davis Cup team?”
“A team
that plays for a sort of cup they have.”
“They
have cups, do they, in the world—or sub-world—of tennis? And what are you
proposing to do to foil this Davis Cup addict?”
“Ah,
there you have me. I keep asking her to let me give her a golf lesson. I feel
that in the pure surroundings of the practice tee her true self would come to
the surface, causing her to recoil with loathing from men like Dwight Messmore.
But she scoffs at the suggestion. She says golf is a footing game and she can’t
understand how any except the half-witted can find pleasure in it.”
“And
that appalling speech did not quench your love?”
“Of
course it didn’t quench my love. A love like mine doesn’t go around getting
itself quenched. But I admit that the situation is sticky, and I shall have to
survey it from every angle and take steps.”
It was
not until several weeks had elapsed, a period in which I had seen nothing of
him, that I learned with a sickening qualm of horror how awful were the steps
which he had decided to take.
He
became a tennis player.
It was,
of course, as I learned subsequently, not without prolonged and earnest
wrestling with his conscience that a man like Ambrose Gussett, playing even
then to a handicap of two and destined in the near future to be scratch, had
been able to bring himself to jettison all the principles of a lifetime and
plunge into the abyss. Later, when the madness had passed and he was once more
hitting them sweetly off the tee, he told me that the struggle had been
terrific. But in the end infatuation had proved too strong. If, he said to
himself, it was necessary in order to win Evangeline Tewkesbury to become a
tennis player, a tennis player he would be.