The Golf Omnibus by P. G. Wodehouse
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.”
“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.
“You were there today and yesterday?”
In spite of his trying situation, the yeasty exhilaration which had been upon him when he entered the room returned to Bradbury.
“Was I!” he cried. “You bet your Russian boots I was! Only winning a cup, that’s all!”
“You won a cup?”
“You bet your diamond tiara I won a cup. Say, listen,” said Bradbury, diving for a priceless Boule table and wrenching a leg off it. “Do you know what happened in the semi-final?” He clasped his fingers over the table-leg in the overlapping grip. “I’m here, see, about fifteen feet off the green. The other fellow lying dead, and I’m playing the like. Best I could hope for was a half, you’ll say, eh? Well, listen. I just walked up to that little white ball, and I gave it a little flick, and, believe me or believe me not, that little white ball never stopped running till in plunked into the hole.”
He stopped. He perceived that he had been introducing into the debate extraneous and irrelevant matter.
“Honey,” he said, fervently, “you mustn’t get mad about this. Maybe, if we try again, it will be all right. Give me another chance. Let me come out and play a round tomorrow. I think perhaps your style of play is a thing that wants getting used to. After all, I didn’t like olives the first time I tried them. Or whisky. Or caviare, for that matter. Probably if⎯”
Mrs. Fisher shook her head.
“I shall never play again.”
“Oh, but, listen⎯”
She looked at him fondly, her eyes dim with happy tears.
“I should have known you better, Bradbury. I suspected you. How foolish I was.”
“There, there,” said Bradbury.
“It was mother’s fault. She put ideas into my head.”
There was much that Bradbury would have liked to say about her mother, but he felt that this was not the time.
“And you really forgive me for sneaking off, and playing at Squashy Hollow?”
“Of course.”
“Then why not a little round tomorrow?”
“No, Bradbury, I shall never play again. Vosper says I mustn’t.”
“What!”
“He saw me one morning on the links, and he came to me and told me—quite nicely and respectfully—that it must not occur again. He said with the utmost deference that I was making a spectacle of myself and that this nuisance must now cease. So I gave it up. But it’s all right. Vosper thinks that gentle massage will cure my wheezing, so I’m having it every day, and really I do think there’s an improvement already.”
“Where is Vosper?” said Bradbury hoarsely.
“You aren’t going to be rude to him, Bradbury? He is so sensitive.”
But Bradbury Fisher had left the room.
“You rang, sir?” said Vosper, entering the Byzantine smoking-room some few minutes later.
“Yes,” said Bradbury. “Vosper, I am a plain, rugged man and I do not know all that there is to be known about these things. So do not be offended if I ask you a question.”
“Not at all, sir.”
“Tell me, Vosper, did the Duke ever shake hands with you?”
“Once only, sir—mistaking me in a dimly-lit hall for a visiting archbishop.”
“Would it be all right for me to shake hands with you now?”
“If you wish it, sir, certainly.”
“I want to thank you, Vosper. Mrs. Fisher tells me that you have stopped her playing golf. I thing that you have saved my reason, Vosper.”
“That is extremely gratifying, sir.”
“Your salary is trebled.”
“Thank you very much, sir. And, while we are talking, sir, if I might⎯ There is one other little matter I wished to speak of, sir.”
“Shoot, Vosper.”
“It concerns Mrs. Maplebury, sir.”
“What about her?”
“If I might say so, sir, she would scarcely have done for the Duke.”
A sudden wild thrill shot through Bradbury.
“You mean⎯?” he stammered.
“I mean, sir, that Mrs. Maplebury must go. I make no criticism of Mrs. Maplebury, you understand, sir. I merely say that she would decidedly not have done for the Duke.”
Bradbury drew in his breath sharply.
“Vosper,” he said, “the more I hear of that Duke of yours, the more I seem to like him. You really think he would have drawn the line at Mrs. Maplebury?”
“Very firmly, sir.”
“Spl
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“And, Vosper.”
“Sir?”
“Your salary. It is quadrupled.”
“I am greatly obliged, sir.”
“Tra-la, Vosper!”
“Tra-la, sir. Will that be all?”
“That will be all. Tra-la!”
“Tra-la, sir,” said the butler.
15
CHESTER FORGETS HIMSELF
THE AFTERNOON WAS warm and heavy. Butterflies loafed languidly in the sunshine, birds panted in the shady recesses of the trees.
The Oldest Member, snug in his favourite chair, had long since succumbed to the drowsy influence of the weather. His eyes were closed, his chin sunk upon his breast. The pipe which he had been smoking lay beside him on the turf, and ever and anon there proceeded from him a muffled snore.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. There was a sharp, cracking sound as of splitting wood. The Oldest Member sat up, blinking. As soon as his eyes had become accustomed to the glare, he perceived that a foursome had holed out on the ninth and was disintegrating. Two of the players were moving with quick, purposeful steps in the direction of the side door which gave entrance to the bar; a third was making for the road that led to the village, bearing himself as one in profound dejection; the fourth came on to the terrace.
“Finished?” said the Oldest Member.
The other stopped, wiping a heated brow. He lowered himself into the adjoining chair and stretched his legs out.
“Yes. We started at the tenth. Golly, I’m tired. No joke playing in this weather.”
“How did you come out?”
“We won on the last green. Jimmy Fothergill and I were playing the vicar and Rupert Blake.”
“What was that sharp, cracking sound I heard?” asked the Oldest Member.
“That was the vicar smashing his putter. Poor old chap, he had rotten luck all the way round, and it didn’t seem to make it any better for him that he wasn’t able to relieve his feelings in the ordinary way.”