The Golf Omnibus (46 page)

“—the story,” continued the Sage, “of Jane Packard, William Bates and Rodney
Spelvin—which, as you have never heard it, I will now proceed to relate.”

“Can't stop now, much as I should like—”

“It is a theory of mine,” proceeded the Oldest Member, attaching himself to the other's coat-tails, and pulling him gently back into his seat, “that nothing but misery can come of the union between a golfer and an outcast whose soul has not been purified by the noblest of games. This is well exemplified by the story of Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”

“All sorts of things to look after—”

“That is why I am hoping so sincerely that there is nothing more serious than a temporary flirtation in this business of Mabel Patmore and bowls-playing Purvis. A girl in whose life golf has become a factor, would be mad to trust her happiness to a blister whose idea of enjoyment is trundling wooden balls across a lawn. Sooner or later he is certain to fail her in some crisis. Lucky for her if this failure occurs before the marriage knot has been inextricably tied and so opens her eyes to his inadequacy—as was the case in the matter of Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin. I will now,” said the Oldest Member, “tell you all about Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”

The secretary uttered a choking groan.

“I shall miss the next dance,” he pleaded.

“A bit of luck for some nice girl,” said the Sage, equably.

He tightened his grip on the other's arm.

Jane Packard and William Bates (said the Oldest Member) were not, you must understand, officially engaged. They had grown up together from childhood, and there existed between them a sort of understanding—the understanding being that,
if ever William could speed himself up enough to propose, Jane would accept him, and they would settle down and live stodgily and happily ever after. For William was not one of your rapid wooers. In his affair of the heart he moved somewhat slowly and ponderously, like a motor-lorry, an object which both in physique and temperament he greatly resembled. He was an extraordinarily large, powerful, ox-like young man, who required plenty of time to make up his mind about any given problem. I have seen him in the club dining-room musing with a thoughtful frown for fifteen minutes on end while endeavouring to weigh the rival merits of a chump chop and a sirloin steak as a luncheon dish. A placid, leisurely man, I might almost call him lymphatic. I
will
call him lymphatic. He was lymphatic.

The first glimmering of an idea that Jane might possibly be a suitable wife for him had come to William some three years before this story opens. Having brooded on the matter tensely for six months, he then sent her a bunch of roses. In the October of the following year, nothing having occurred to alter his growing conviction that she was an attractive girl, he presented her with a two-pound box of assorted chocolates. And from then on his progress, though not rapid, was continuous, and there seemed little reason to doubt that, should nothing come about to weaken Jane's regard for him, another five years or so would see the matter settled.

And it did not appear likely that anything would weaken Jane's regard. They had much in common, for she was a calm, slow-moving person, too. They had a mutual devotion to golf, and played together every day; and the fact that their handicaps were practically level formed a strong bond. Most divorces, as you know, spring from the fact that the husband is too markedly superior to his wife at golf; this leading him, when she starts criticizing his relations, to say bitter and unforgivable things about her mashie-shots. Nothing of this kind could happen with William and Jane. They would build their life on a solid foundation of sympathy and understanding. The years would find them consoling and encouraging each other, happy married lovers. If, that is to say, William ever got round to proposing.

It was not until the fourth year of this romance that I detected the first sign of any alteration in the schedule. I had happened to call on the Packards one afternoon and found them all out except Jane. She gave me tea and conversed for a while, but she seemed distrait. I had known her since she wore rompers, so felt entitled to ask if there was anything wrong.

“Not exactly wrong,” said Jane, and she heaved a sigh.

“Tell me,” I said.

She heaved another sigh.

“Have you ever read
The Love that Scorches,
by Luella Periton Phipps?” she asked.

I said I had not.

“I got it out of the library yesterday,” said Jane, dreamily, “and finished it at three this morning in bed. It is a very, very beautiful book. It is all about the desert and people riding on camels and a wonderful Arab chief with stern, yet tender, eyes,
and a girl called Angela, and oases and dates and mirages, and all like that. There is a chapter where the Arab chief seizes the girl and clasps her in his arms and she feels his hot breath searing her face and he flings her on his horse and they ride off and all around was sand and night, and the mysterious stars. And somehow—oh, I don't know—”

She gazed yearningly at the chandelier.

“I wish mother would take me to Algiers next winter,” she murmured, absently. “It would do her rheumatism so much good.”

I went away frankly uneasy. These novelists, I felt, ought to be more careful. They put ideas into girls' heads and made them dissatisfied. I determined to look William up and give him a kindly word of advice. It was no business of mine, you may say, but they were so ideally suited to one another that it seemed a tragedy that anything should come between them. And Jane was in a strange mood. At any moment, I felt, she might take a good, square look at William and wonder what she could ever have seen in him. I hurried to the boy's cottage.

“William,” I said, “as one who dandled you on his knee when you were a baby, I wish to ask you a personal question. Answer me this, and make it snappy. Do you love Jane Packard?”

A look of surprise came into his face, followed by one of intense thought. He was silent for a space.

“Who, me?” he said at length.

“Yes, you.”

“Jane Packard?”

“Yes, Jane Packard.”

“Do I love Jane Packard?” said William, assembling the material and arranging it neatly in his mind.

He pondered for perhaps five minutes.

“Why, of course I do,” he said.

“Splendid!”

“Devotedly, dash it!”

“Capital!”

“You might say madly.”

I tapped him on his barrel-like chest.

“Then my advice to you, William Bates, is to tell her so.”

“Now that's rather a brainy scheme,” said William, looking at me admiringly, “I see exactly what you're driving at. You mean it would kind of settle things, and all that?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I've got to go away for a couple of days tomorrow—it's the Invitation Tournament at Squashy Hollow—but I'll be back on Wednesday. Suppose I take her out on the links on Wednesday and propose?”

“A very good idea.”

“At the sixth hole, say?”

“At the sixth hole would do excellently.”

“Or the seventh?”

“The sixth would be better. The ground slopes from the tee, and you would be hidden from view by the dog-leg turn.”

“Something in that.”

“My own suggestion would be that you somehow contrive to lead her into that large bunker to the left of the sixth fairway.”

“Why?”

“I have reason to believe that Jane would respond more readily to your wooing were it conducted in some vast sandy waste. And there is another thing,” I proceeded, earnestly, “which I must impress upon you. See that there is nothing tame or tepid about your behaviour when you propose. You must show zip and romance. In fact, I strongly recommend you, before you even say a word to her, to seize her and clasp her in your arms and let your hot breath sear her face.”

“Who, me?” said William.

“Believe me, it is what will appeal to her most.”

“But, I say! Hot breath, I mean! Dash it all, you know, what?”

“I assure you it is indispensable.”

“Seize her?” said William blankly.

“Precisely.”

“Clasp her in my arms?”

“Just so.”

William plunged into silent thought once more.

“Well, you
know
, I suppose,” he said at length. “You've had experience, I take it. Still⎯ Oh, all right, I'll have a stab at it.”

“There spoke the true William Bates!” I said. “Go to it, lad, and Heaven speed your wooing!”

In all human schemes—and it is this that so often brings failure to the subtlest strategists—there is always the chance of the Unknown Factor popping up, that unforeseen X for which we have made no allowance and which throws our whole plan of campaign out of gear. I had not anticipated anything of the kind coming along to mar the arrangements on the present occasion; but when I reached the first tee on the Wednesday afternoon to give William Bates that last word of encouragement, which means so much, I saw that I had been too sanguine. William had not yet arrived, but Jane was there, and with her a tall, slim, dark-haired, sickeningly romantic-looking youth in faultlessly fitting serge. A stranger to me. He was talking to her in a musical undertone, and she seemed to be hanging on his words. Her beautiful eyes were fixed on his face, and her lips slightly parted. So absorbed was she that it was not until I spoke that she became aware of my presence.

“William not arrived yet?”

She turned with a start.

“William? Hasn't he? Oh! No, not yet. I don't suppose he will be long. I want to introduce you to Mr. Spelvin. He has come to stay with the Wyndhams for a few weeks. He is going to walk round with us.”

Naturally this information came as a shock to me, but I masked my feelings and greeted the young man with a well-assumed cordiality.

“Mr. George Spelvin, the actor?” I asked, shaking hands.

“My cousin,” he said. “My name is Rodney Spelvin. I do not share George's histrionic ambitions. If I have any claim to—may I say renown?—it is as a maker of harmonies.”

“A composer, eh?”

“Verbal harmonies,” explained Mr. Spelvin. “I am, in my humble fashion, a poet.”

“He writes the most beautiful poetry,” said Jane, warmly. “He has just been reciting some of it to me.”

“Oh, that little thing?” said Mr. Spelvin, deprecatingly. “A mere
morceau.
One of my juvenilia.”

“It was too beautiful for words,” persisted Jane.

“Ah, you,” said Mr. Spelvin, “have the soul to appreciate it. I could wish that there were more like you, Miss Packard. We singers have much to put up with in a crass and materialistic world. Only last week, a man, a coarse editor, asked me what my sonnet, ‘Wine of Desire',
meant
.” He laughed indulgently. “I gave him answer, 'twas a sonnet, not a mining prospectus.”

“It would have served him right,” said Jane, heatedly, “if you had pasted him one on the nose!”

At this point a low whistle behind me attracted my attention, and I turned to perceive William Bates towering against the skyline.

“Hoy!” said William.

I walked to where he stood, leaving Jane and Mr. Spelvin in earnest conversation with their heads close together.

“I say,” said William, in a rumbling undertone, “who's the bird with Jane?”

“A man named Spelvin. He is visiting the Wyndhams. I suppose Mrs. Wyndham made them acquainted.”

“Looks a bit of a Gawd-help-us,” said William critically.

“He is going to walk round with you.”

It was impossible for a man of William Bates's temperament to start, but his face took on a look of faint concern.

“Walk round with us?”

“So Jane said.”

“But look here,” said William. “I can't possibly seize her and clasp her in my arms and do all that hot-breath stuff with this pie-faced exhibit hanging round on the outskirts.”

“No, I fear not.”

“Postpone it, then, what?” said William, with unmistakable relief. “Well, as a matter of fact, it's probably a good thing. There was a most extraordinarily fine steak-and-kidney pudding at lunch, and, between ourselves, I'm not feeling what you might call keyed up to anything in the nature of a romantic scene. Some other time, eh?”

I looked at Jane and the Spelvin youth, and a nameless apprehension swept over me. There was something in their attitude which I found alarming. I was just about to whisper a warning to William not to treat this new arrival too lightly, when Jane caught sight of him and called him over and a moment later they set out on their round.

I walked away pensively. This Spelvin's advent, coming immediately on top of that book of desert love, was undeniably sinister. My heart sank for William, and I waited at the club-house to have a word with him, after his match. He came in two hours later, flushed and jubilant.

“Played the game of my life!” he said. “We didn't hole out all the putts, but, making allowances for everything, you can chalk me up an eighty-three. Not so bad, eh? You know the eighth hole? Well, I was a bit short with my drive, and found my ball lying badly for the brassie, so I took my driving-iron and with a nice easy swing let the pill have it so squarely on the seat of the pants that it flew⎯”

“Where is Jane?” I interrupted.

“Jane? Oh, the bloke Spelvin has taken her home.”

“Beware of him, William!” I whispered, tensely. “Have a care, young Bates! If you don't look out, you'll have him stealing Jane from you. Don't laugh. Remember that I saw them together before you arrived. She was gazing into his eyes as a desert maiden might gaze into the eyes of a sheik. You don't seem to realize, wretched William Bates, that Jane is an extremely romantic girl. A fascinating stranger like this, coming suddenly into her life, may well snatch her away from you before you know where you are.”