The Golf Omnibus (36 page)

“Then what shall I do?”

“Wait,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Wait and be watchful.”

The shades of night were falling when Bradbury returned to his home. He was fatigued but jubilant. He had played forty-five holes in the society of his own sex. He had kept his head down and his eye on the ball. He had sung negro spirituals in the locker-room.

“I trust, Bradbury,” said Mrs. Maplebury, “that you are not tired after your long day?”

“A little,” said Bradbury. “Nothing to signify.” He turned radiantly to his wife.

“Honey,” he said, “you remember the trouble I was having with my iron? Well, today⎯”

He stopped aghast. Like every good husband it had always been his practice hitherto to bring his golfing troubles to his wife, and in many a cosy after-dinner chat he had confided to her the difficulty he was having in keeping his iron-shots straight. And he had only just stopped himself now from telling her that today he had been hitting 'em sweetly on the meat right down the middle.

“Your iron?”

“Er—ah—yes. I have large interests in Iron—as also in Steel, Jute, Woollen Fabrics, and Consolidated Peanuts. A gang has been trying to hammer down my stock. Today I fixed them.”

“You did, did you?” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“I said I did,” retorted Bradbury defiantly.

“So did I. I said you did, did you?”

“What do you mean, did you?”

“Well, you did, didn't you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Exactly what I said. You did. Didn't you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yes, you did!” said Mrs. Maplebury.

Once again Bradbury felt vaguely uneasy. There was nothing in the actual dialogue which had just taken place to cause him alarm—indeed, considered purely as dialogue, it was bright and snappy and well calculated to make things gay about the home. But once more there had been a subtle something in his mother-in-law's manner which had jarred upon him. He mumbled and went off to dress for dinner.

“Ha!” said Mrs. Maplebury, as the door closed.

Such, then, was the position of affairs in the Fisher home. And now that I have arrived thus far in my story and have shown you this man systematically deceiving the woman he had vowed—at one of the most exclusive altars in New York—to love and cherish, you—if you are the sort of husband I hope you are—must be saying to yourself: “But what of Bradbury Fisher's conscience?” Remorse, you feel, must long since have begun to gnaw at his vitals; and the thought suggests itself to you that surely by this time the pangs of self-reproach must have interfered seriously with his short game, even if not as yet sufficiently severe to affect his driving off the tee.

You are overlooking the fact that Bradbury Fisher's was the trained and educated conscience of a man who had passed a large portion of his life in Wall Street; and years of practice had enabled him to reduce the control of it to a science. Many a time in the past, when an active operator on the Street, he had done things to the Small Investor which would have caused raised eyebrows in the fo'c'sle of a pirate sloop—and done them without a blush. He was not the man, therefore, to suffer torment merely because he was slipping one over on the Little Woman.

Occasionally he would wince a trifle at the thought of what would happen if she ever found out; but apart from that, I am doing no more than state the plain truth when I say that Bradbury Fisher did not care a whoop.

Besides, at this point his golf suddenly underwent a remarkable improvement. He had always been a long driver, and quite abruptly he found that he was judging them nicely with the putter. Two weeks after he had started on his campaign of
deception he amazed himself and all who witnessed the performance by cracking a hundred for the first time in his career. And every golfer knows that in the soul of the man who does that there is no room for remorse. Conscience may sting the player who is going round in a hundred and ten, but when it tries to make itself unpleasant to the man who is doing ninety-sevens and ninety-eights, it is simply wasting its time.

I will do Bradbury Fisher justice. He did regret that he was not in a position to tell his wife all about that first ninety-nine of his. He would have liked to take her into a corner and show her with the aid of a poker and a lump of coal just how he had chipped up to the pin on the last hole and left himself a simple two-foot putt. And the forlorn feeling of being unable to confide his triumphs to a sympathetic ear deepened a week later when, miraculously achieving ninety-six in the medal round, he qualified for the sixth sixteen in the annual invitation tournament of the club to which he had attached himself.

“Shall I?” he mused, eyeing her wistfully across the Queen Anne table in the Crystal Boudoir, to which they had retired to drink their after-dinner coffee. “Better not, better not,” whispered Prudence in his ear.

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher.

“Yes, darling?”

“Have you been hard at work today?”

“Yes, precious. Very, very hard at work.”

“Ho!” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What did you say?” said Bradbury.

“I said ho!”

“What do you mean, ho?”

“Just ho. There is no harm, I imagine, in my saying ho, if I wish to.”

“Oh no,” said Bradbury. “By no means. Not at all. Pray do so.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Ho!”

“You do have to slave at the office, don't you?” said Mrs. Fisher.

“I do, indeed.”

“It must be a great strain.”

“A terrible strain. Yes, yes, a terrible strain.”

“Then you won't object to giving it up, will you?”

Bradbury started.

“Giving it up?”

“Giving up going to the office. The fact is, dear,” said Mrs. Fisher, “Vosper has complained.”

“What about?”

“About you going to the office. He says he has never been in the employment of anyone engaged in commerce, and he doesn't like it. The Duke looked down on commerce very much. So I'm afraid, darling, you will have to give it up.”

Bradbury Fisher stared before him, a strange singing in his ears. The blow had been so sudden that he was stunned.

His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could he sneak away from home? And sneak he must for tomorrow and the day after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not be there. He must be there. He had done a ninety-six, and the next best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and, highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four-handicap man who sees himself within reach of a cup.

Blindly he tottered from the room and sought his study. He wanted to be alone. He had to think, think.

The evening paper was lying on the table. Automatically he picked it up and ran his eye over the front page. And, as he did so, he uttered a sharp exclamation.

He leaped from his chair and returned to the boudoir, carrying the paper.

“Well, what do you know about this?” said Bradbury Fisher, in a hearty voice.

“We know a great deal about a good many things,” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“What is it, Bradbury?” said Mrs. Fisher.

“I'm afraid I s all have to leave you for a couple of days. Great nuisance, but there it is. But, of course, I must be there.”

“Where?”

“Ah, where?” said Mrs. Maplebury.

“At Sing-Sing. I see in the paper that tomorrow and the day after they are inaugurating the new Osborne Stadium. All the men of my class will be attending, and I must go, too.”

“Must you really?”

“I certainly must. Not to do so would be to show a lack of college spirit. The boys are playing Yale, and there is to be a big dinner afterwards. I shouldn't wonder if I had to make a speech. But don't worry, honey,” he said, kissing his wife affectionately. “I shall be back before you know I've gone.” He turned sharply to Mrs. Maplebury. “I beg your pardon?” he said stiffly.

“I did not speak.”

“I thought you did.”

“I merely inhaled. I simply drew in air through my nostrils. If I am not at liberty to draw in air through my nostrils in your house, pray inform me.”

“I would prefer that you didn't,” said Bradbury, between set teeth.

“Then I would suffocate.”

“Yes,” said Bradbury Fisher.

Of all the tainted millionaires who, after years of plundering the widow and the orphan, have devoted the evening of their life to the game of golf, few can ever have been so boisterously exhilarated as was Bradbury Fisher when, two nights later, he returned to his home. His dreams had all come true. He had won his way to the foot
of the rainbow. In other words, he was the possessor of a small pewter cup, value three dollars, which he had won by beating a feeble old gentleman with one eye in the final match of the competition for the sixth sixteen at the Squashy Hollow Golf Club Invitation Tournament.

He entered the house, radiant.

“Tra-la!” sang Bradbury Fisher. “Tra-la!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Vosper, who had encountered him in the hall.

“Eh? Oh, nothing. Just tra-la.”

“Very good, sir.”

Bradbury Fisher looked at Vosper. For the first time it seemed to sweep over him like a wave that Vosper was an uncommonly good fellow. The past was forgotten, and he beamed upon Vosper like the rising sun.

“Vosper,” he said, “what wages are you getting?”

“I regret to say, sir,” replied the butler, “that, at the moment, the precise amount of the salary of which I am in receipt has slipped my mind. I could refresh my memory by consulting my books, if you so desire it, sir.”

“Never mind. Whatever it is, it's doubled.”

“I am obliged, sir. You will, no doubt, send me a written memo to that effect?”

“Twenty, if you like.”

“One will be ample, sir.”

Bradbury curvetted past him through the baronial hall and into the Crystal Boudoir. His wife was there alone.

“Mother has gone to bed,” she said. “She has a bad headache.”

“You don't say!” said Bradbury. It was as if everything was conspiring to make this a day of days. “Well, it's great to be back in the old home.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Capital.”

“You saw all your old friends?”

“Every one of them.”

“Did you make a speech at the dinner?”

“Did I! They rolled out of their seats and the waiters swept them up with dusters.”

“A very big dinner, I suppose?”

“Enormous.”

“How was the football game?”

“Best I've ever seen. We won. Number 432,986 made a hundred-and-ten-yard run for a touchdown in the last five minutes.”

“Really?”

“And that takes a bit of doing, with a ball and chain round your ankle, believe me!”

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “where have you been these last two days?”

Bradbury's heart missed a beat. His wife was looking exactly like her mother. It was the first time he had ever been able to believe that she could be Mrs. Maplebury's
daughter.

“Been? Why, I'm telling you.”

“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher, “just one word. Have you seen the paper this morning?”

“Why, no. What with all the excitement of meeting the boys and this and that⎯”

“Then you have not seen that the inauguration of the new Stadium at Sing-Sing was postponed on account of an outbreak of mumps in the prison?”

Bradbury gulped.

“There was no dinner, no football game, no gathering of Old Grads—nothing! So—where have you been, Bradbury?”

Bradbury gulped again.

“You're sure you haven't got this wrong?” he said at length.

“Quite.”

“I mean, sure it wasn't some other place?”

“Quite.”

“Sing-Sing? You got the name correctly?”

“Quite. Where, Bradbury, have you been these last two days?”

“Well—er⎯”

Mrs. Fisher coughed dryly.

“I merely ask out of curiosity. The facts will, of course, come out in court.”

“In court!”

“Naturally I propose to place this affair in the hands of my lawyer immediately.”

Bradbury started convulsively.

“You mustn't!”

“I certainly shall.”

A shudder shook Bradbury from head to foot. He felt worse that he had done when his opponent in the final had laid him a stymie on the last green, thereby squaring the match and taking it to the nineteenth hole.

“I will tell you all,” he muttered.

“Well?”

“Well—it was like this.”

“Yes?”

“Er—like this. In fact, this way.”

“Proceed.”

Bradbury clenched his hands; and, as far as that could be managed, avoided her eye.

“I've been playing golf,” he said in a low, toneless voice.

“Playing golf?”

“Yes.” Bradbury hesitated. “I don't mean it in an offensive spirit, and no doubt most men would have enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but I—well, I am curiously constituted, angel, and the fact is I simply couldn't stand playing with you any longer. The fault, I am sure, was mine, but—well, there it is. If I had played another round
with you, my darling, I think that I should have begun running about in circles, biting my best friends. So I thought it all over, and, not wanting to hurt your feelings by telling you the truth, I stooped to what I might call a ruse. I said I was going to the office; and, instead of going to the office, I went off to Squashy Hollow and played there.”

Mrs. Fisher uttered a cry.