The Golf Omnibus (45 page)

“Oh, then that accounts for it.”

“Accounts for what?”

“Why, your looking so pleased with life. I got an idea from Letty, when she wrote to me, that you were at death's door. Your gloom seems to have made a deep impression on the child. Her letter was full of it.”

Rollo was moved.

“Dear little Letty! She is wonderfully sympathetic.”

“Well, I must be off now,” said Enid Willoughby. “I'm late. Oh, talking of Letty. Don't children say the funniest things! She wrote in her letter that you were very old and wretched and that she was going to put you out of your misery.”

“Ha ha ha!” laughed Rollo.

“We had to poison poor old Ponto the other day, you know, and poor little Letty was inconsolable till we explained to her that it was really the kindest thing to do, because he was so old and ill. But just imagine her thinking of wanting to end
your
sufferings!”

“Ha ha!” laughed Rollo. “Ha ha h⎯!”

His voice trailed off into a broken gurgle. Quite suddenly a sinister thought had come to him.

The arrowroot had tasted rummy!

“Why, what on earth is the matter?” asked Mrs. Willoughby, regarding his ashen face.

Rollo could find no words. He yammered speechlessly. Yes, for several nights the arrowroot had tasted very rummy. Rummy! There was no other adjective. Even as he plied the spoon he had said to himself: “This arrowroot tastes rummy!” And—he uttered a sharp yelp as he remembered—it had been little Lettice who had brought
it to him. He recollected being touched at the time by the kindly act.

“What
is
the matter, Rollo?” demanded Mrs. Willoughby, sharply. “Don't stand there looking like a dying duck.”

“I am a dying duck,” responded Rollo, hoarsely. “A dying man, I mean. Enid, that infernal child has poisoned me!”

“Don't be ridiculous! And kindly don't speak of her like that!”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't blame her, I suppose. No doubt her motives were good. But the fact remains.”

“Rollo, you're too absurd.”

“But the arrowroot tasted rummy.”

“I never knew you could be such an idiot,” said his exasperated sister with sisterly outspokenness. “I thought you would think it quaint. I thought you would roar with laughter.”

“I did—till I remembered about the rumminess of the arrowroot.”

Mrs. Willoughby uttered an impatient exclamation and walked away.

Rollo Podmarsh stood on the tenth tee, a volcano of mixed emotions. Mechanically he pulled out his pipe and lit it. But he found that he could not smoke. In this supreme crisis of his life tobacco seemed to have lost its magic. He put the pipe back in his pocket and gave himself up to his thoughts. Now terror gripped him; anon a sort of gentle melancholy. It was so hard that he should be compelled to leave the world just as he had begun to hit 'em right.

And then in the welter of his thoughts there came one of practical value. To wit, that by hurrying to the doctor's without delay he might yet be saved. There might be antidotes.

He turned to go and there was Mary Kent standing beside him with her bright, encouraging smile.

“I'm sorry I kept you so long,” she said. “It's your honour. Fire away, and remember that you've got to do this nine in fifty-three at the outside.”

Rollo's thought flitted wistfully to the snug surgery where Dr. Brown was probably sitting at this moment surrounded by the finest antidotes.

“Do you know, I think I ought to⎯”

“Of course you ought to,” said Mary. “If you did the first nine in forty-six, you can't possibly take fifty-three coming in.”

For one long moment Rollo continued to hesitate—a moment during which the instinct of self-preservation seemed as if it must win the day. All his life he had been brought up to be nervous about his health, and panic gripped him. But there is a deeper, nobler instinct than that of self-preservation—the instinctive desire of a golfer who is at the top of his form to go on and beat his medal-score record. And little by little this grand impulse began to dominate Rollo. If, he felt, he went off now to take antidotes, the doctor might possibly save his life; but reason told him that never again would he be likely to do the first nine in forty-six. He would have to start all over afresh.

Rollo Podmarsh hesitated no longer. With a pale, set face he teed up his ball and drove.

If I were telling this story to a golfer instead of to an excrescence—I use the word in the kindliest spirit—who spends his time messing about on a bowling-green, nothing would please me better than to describe shot by shot Rollo's progress over the remaining nine holes. Epics have been written with less material. But these details would, I am aware, be wasted on you. Let it suffice that by the time his last approach trickled on to the eighteenth green he had taken exactly fifty shots.

“Three for it!” said Mary Kent. “Steady now! Take it quite easy and be sure to lay your second dead.”

It was prudent counsel, but Rollo was now thoroughly above himself. He had got his feet wet in a puddle on the sixteenth, but he did not care. His winter woollies seemed to be lined with ants, but he ignored them. All he knew was that he was on the last green in ninety-six, and he meant to finish in style. No tame three putts for him! His ball was five yards away, but he aimed for the back of the hole and brought his putter down with a whack. Straight and true the ball sped, hit the tin, jumped high in the air, and fell into the hole with a rattle.

“Oo!” cried Mary.

Rollo Podmarsh wiped his forehead and leaned dizzily on his putter. For a moment, so intense is the fervour induced by the game of games, all he could think of was that he had gone round in ninety-seven. Then, as one waking from a trance, he began to appreciate his position. The fever passed, and a clammy dismay took possession of him. He had achieved his life's ambition; but what now? Already he was conscious of a curious discomfort within him. He felt as he supposed Italians of the Middle Ages must have felt after dropping in to take pot-luck with the Borgias. It was hard. He had gone round in ninety-seven, but he could never take the next step in the career which he had mapped out in his dreams—the money-match with the lumbago-stricken Colonel Bodger.

Mary Kent was fluttering round him, bubbling congratulations, but Rollo sighed.

“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much. But the trouble is, I'm afraid I'm going to die almost immediately. I've been poisoned!”

“Poisoned!”

“Yes. Nobody is to blame. Everything was done with the best intentions. But there it is.”

“But I don't understand.”

Rollo explained. Mary listened pallidly.

“Are you sure?” she gasped.

“Quite sure,” said Rollo, gravely. “The arrowroot tasted rummy.”

“But arrowroot always does.”

Rollo shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It tastes like warm blotting-paper, but not rummy.”

Mary was sniffing.

“Don't cry,” urged Rollo tenderly. “Don't cry.”

“But I must. And I've come out without a handkerchief.”

“Permit me,” said Rollo, producing one of her best from his left breast-pocket.

“I wish I had a powder-puff,” said Mary.

“Allow me,” said Rollo. “And your hair has become a little disordered. If I may⎯” And from the same reservoir he drew a handful of hairpins.

Mary gazed at these exhibits with astonishment.

“But these are mine,” she said.

“Yes. I sneaked them from time to time.”

“But why?”

“Because I loved you,” said Rollo. And in a few moving sentences which I will not trouble you with he went on to elaborate this theme.

Mary listened with her heart full of surging emotions, which I cannot possibly go into if you persist in looking at that damned watch of yours. The scales had fallen from her eyes. She had thought slightingly of this man because he had been a little over-careful of his health, and all the time he had had within him the potentiality of heroism. Something seemed to snap inside her.

“Rollo!” she cried, and flung herself into his arms.

“Mary!” muttered Rollo, gathering her up.

“I told you it was all nonsense,” said Mrs. Willoughby, coming up at this tense moment and going on with the conversation where she had left off. “I've just seen Letty, and she said she meant to put you out of your misery but the chemist wouldn't sell her any poison, so she let it go.”

Rollo disentangled himself from Mary.

“What?” he cried.

Mrs. Willoughby repeated her remarks.

“You're sure?” he said.

“Of course I'm sure.”

“Then why did the arrowroot taste rummy?”

“I made inquiries about that. It seems that mother was worried about your taking to smoking, and she found an advertisement in one of the magazines about the Tobacco Habit Cured in Three Days by a secret method without the victim's knowledge. It was a gentle, safe, agreeable method of eliminating the nicotine poison from the system, strengthening the weakened membranes, and overcoming the craving; so she put some in your arrowroot every night.”

There was a long silence. To Rollo Podmarsh it seemed as though the sun had suddenly begun to shine, the birds to sing, and the grasshoppers to toot. All Nature was one vast substantial smile. Down in the valley by the second hole he caught sight of Wallace Chesney's Plus Fours gleaming as their owner stooped to play his shot, and it seemed to him that he had never in his life seen anything so lovely.

“Mary,” he said, in a low, vibrant voice, “will you wait here for me? I want to go
into the club-house for a moment.”

“To change your wet shoes?”

“No!” thundered Rollo. “I'm never going to change my wet shoes again in my life.” He felt in his pocket, and hurled a box of patent pills far into the undergrowth. “But I
am
going to change my winter woollies. And when I've put those dashed barbed-wire entanglements into the club-house furnace, I'm going to phone to old Colonel Bodger. I hear his lumbago's worse than ever. I'm going to fix up a match with him for a shilling a hole. And if I don't lick the boots off him you can break the engagement!”

“My hero!” murmured Mary.

Rollo kissed her, and with long, resolute steps strode to the club-house.

THERE WAS A
sound of revelry by night, for the first Saturday in June had arrived and the Golf Club was holding its monthly dance. Fairy lanterns festooned the branches of the chestnut trees on the terrace above the ninth green, and from the big dining-room, cleared now of its tables and chairs, came a muffled slithering of feet and the plaintive sound of saxophones moaning softly like a man who has just missed a short putt. In a basket-chair in the shadows, the Oldest Member puffed a cigar and listened, well content. His was the peace of the man who has reached the age when he is no longer expected to dance.

A door opened, and a young man came out of the club-house. He stood on the steps with folded arms, gazing to left and right. The Oldest Member, watching him from the darkness, noted that he wore an air of gloom. His brow was furrowed and he had the indefinable look of one who has been smitten in the spiritual solar plexus.

Yes, where all around him was joy, jollity, and song, this young man brooded.

The sound of a high tenor voice, talking rapidly and entertainingly on the subject of modern Russian thought, now intruded itself on the peace of the night. From the farther end of the terrace a girl came into the light of the lantern, her arm in that of a second young man. She was small and pretty, he tall and intellectual. The light shone on his high forehead and glittered on his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. The girl was gazing up at him with reverence and adoration, and at the sight of these twain the youth on the steps appeared to undergo some sort of spasm. His face became contorted and he wobbled. Then, with a gesture of sublime despair, he tripped over the mat and stumbled back into the club-house. The couple passed on and disappeared, and the Oldest Member had the night to himself, until the door opened once more and the club's courteous and efficient secretary trotted down the steps. The scent of the cigar drew him to where the Oldest Member sat, and he dropped into the chair beside him.

“Seen young Ramage tonight?” asked the secretary.

“He was standing on those steps only a moment ago,” replied the Oldest Member. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought perhaps you might have had a talk with him and found out what's the matter. Can't think what's come to him tonight. Nice, civil boy as a rule, but just now, when I was trying to tell him about my short approach on the fifth this afternoon, he was positively abrupt. Gave a sort of hollow gasp and dashed away in the
middle of a sentence.”

The Oldest Member sighed.

“You must overlook his brusqueness,” he said. “The poor lad is passing through a trying time. A short while back I was the spectator of a little drama that explains everything. Mabel Patmore is flirting disgracefully with that young fellow Purvis.”

“Purvis? Oh, you mean the man who won the club Bowls Championship last week?”

“I can quite believe that he may have disgraced himself in the manner you describe,” said the Sage, coldly. “I know he plays that noxious game. And it is for that reason that I hate to see a nice girl like Mabel Patmore, who only needs a little more steadiness off the tee to become a very fair golfer, wasting her time on him. I suppose his attraction lies in the fact that he has a great flow of conversation, while poor Ramage is, one must admit, more or less of a dumb Isaac. Girls are too often snared by a glib tongue. Still, it is a pity, a great pity. The whole affair recalls irresistibly to my mind the story—”

The secretary rose with a whirr like a rocketing pheasant.