"Then I'd better get it over quickly. Sheila--will you marry me?"
"Mr. Hewson--I will not. Where are you going?"
Charles Hewson turned half-way across the lawn. "Up to London. I want
to find a man there, and give him the best dinner he's ever had in his
life."
"What man?"
"The sportsman who wrote that article about walking tours." It was then
the smile broke bounds.
"We've got some topping peaches in the garden. Couldn't you send him
some of those as--a payment on account?"
_*XI -- The Poser*_
No one could call Portsdown-on-Sea a fashionable place. To the chosen
few it constituted the most delightful seaside resort in the south of
England. But very few did know, and they guarded their secret jealously.
They formed a clique--the Portsdown clique--and the stranger within
their gates was not welcomed.
The Grand was their stronghold, and during the winter the hotel relapsed
into sleep, wrapped in a drab garment of dust sheets and chair covers.
A few of the rooms were kept open all the year round for anyone who
might have business in the town; or for stray, foolhardy golfers who
found the grey scudding mist which whipped over the salt marshes a cure
for the cobwebs of an office life. But their stay was never a long one.
Three or four days, a week-end perhaps--and then once again the
melancholy waiter would preside over an empty dining-room. He formed
the nucleus of the staff--did John. Each spring he blossomed forth into
a crowd of young and more or less disreputable minions; each autumn he
shrank back again to his solitary grandeur. And Martha, the female
representative of the establishment, did likewise amongst the
chambermaid portion of the servants.
During the war, business, even in the height of the season, had not been
good. The Get-Rich-Quick brigade, whose horizon was bounded by
half-crown cigars and champagne at any and every hour of the day, found
Portsdown slow. There was no band and there was no theatre, and there is
but little use in drinking champagne at eleven in the morning unless
less fortunate beings--professional men with a small income, or wounded
officers--can see the deed and gnash their teeth with envy. And the
cigar with the band round it quite failed to impress Peter Gurney, the
professional at the club-house. He eyed it with disfavour, and
ostentatiously stood up-wind if compelled to give a lesson to its proud
owner.
"These 'ere links are for gowf," he remarked once in a burst of
confidence to Sawyer, his one-legged assistant, "not for the decimation
of them stinking poison-gases."
And Sawyer, though he had an idea that something was wrong with the
phraseology of the latter part of the remark, grunted an assent.
But, with the signing of the Armistice, visions of better days ahead
loomed up in the minds of all who were interested in the welfare of
Portsdown. Peter Gurney laid in an increased stock of hickory wood, to
make clubs for "them as can use 'em." The secretary of the golf club
turned his mind more resolutely to questions of greens and labour, and
rent his clothes and tore his hair on the matter of the unemployment
bonus.
Up at the hotel the manager considered the advisability of hiring a
string quartette for August and September; and rumour has it that old
John so far forgot himself as to purchase two new dickies.
"We'll be getting the old lot back," he said to Martha one day. "Men as
is men, and can bathe and play tennis and golf--not them diseases in
fancy dress, as we've had the last year or two."
It was towards the end of March that four or five of the old habitues
arrived. They selected the chairs they had used of old: they all but
labelled them with their names. They were the forerunners of the elder
generation who remained there throughout the summer and approved or
disapproved as the case might be of the children who came later. And by
children, anything up to thirty is implied.
It was Mrs. Garrett, the wife of the retired judge, that the manager
first told of Ruth Seaton's impending arrival.
"Miss Bannister that was," he murmured to her one evening. "Married
poor young Mr. Seaton who came here for two or three years."
"Why poor?" boomed his august listener.
"He was killed in the war," he returned. "She is a widow."
"So one would be led to assume." Mrs. Garrett regarded him judicially.
"Unless she has married again."
The manager shrugged deprecating shoulders and passed on. The idea as
mentioned by Mrs. Garrett seemed almost indecent.
"We must be very good to her," ordered that lady after dinner in the
lounge. "She is, after all, one of us."
Ruth Bannister had married Jimmy Seaton the summer before the war.
There had been the time when he was training, and then those wonderful
snatched interludes of leave, when nothing mattered save the present.
And then had come the news. For a week she heard nothing--no letter, no
field service postcard. On the eighth day there came a telegram from
the War Office, and the suspense was over.
It seemed impossible. Other men might be killed: other names might
appear in the casualty lists--but not Jimmy. Oh! no, not Jimmy--her
Jimmy. There never had been such a marriage as theirs: not a quarrel,
not a cross word the whole time. And now Jimmy was gone. Somewhere out
in that filthy field of mud he was lying, and the eyes that had smiled
at her were staring and sightless. Dear God! but it was too cruel....
Never again could she look at another man. Her body was still
alive--but her soul, her spirit were dead. They were buried with Jimmy.
"You'll find me just the same, old man," she used to say out loud
sometimes--"just the same. There'll never be anyone else, Jimmy--never,
never."
Once a well-meaning but stupid friend had suggested the possibility of
marrying again, and Ruth had smiled--a sad little smile. Also perhaps
it was just a little tolerant: the smile of a parent whose child had
asked some particularly foolish question.
"My dear," said Ruth, "I don't think you quite understand. There'll
never be anybody in my life but Jimmy. How could there be?"
It was her brother who first dragged her out to a theatre.
"My dear girl," he said, "you can't go on burying yourself like this.
Come to a show; it'll do you all the good in the world."
And Ruth, because he was home on leave, just thought it was a shame not
to give him as good a time as possible; and so, just to please him, she
went.
She looked her best in black--and her brother's "By Jove, old bean--you
look topping!" as she came into the room before starting, sounded very
pleasantly in her ears. Of course it didn't much matter what she looked
like--now: except that Jimmy had always been very particular. He
wouldn't like her not to look smart.
It was the second act that made her roar with laughter, and she was so
engrossed in the play that she failed to notice her brother glancing at
her once or twice with a quiet smile of satisfaction. In fact, during
the second act she quite forgot, and it was only as she stood up to go
that it all came back to her mind.
"Good show, wasn't it?" said her brother.
She smiled a little sadly. "I suppose so," she answered. "Somehow one
doesn't care very much in these days...." She sighed. "But anyway, you
liked it, old man, and that's all that matters."
And her brother, who seemed on the point of saying something, changed
his mind and remained silent.
It was natural that Ruth should go to Portsdown. It was there she had
met Jimmy: it was there they had become engaged. It would be very
painful, and in a way she dreaded the tender, intimate, associations
that all the well-known haunts would call up to her mind. Portsdown was
so woven up round Jimmy--it would seem almost part of him. That sandy
hillock, for instance, just beyond the third tee, where they had lazed
away so many afternoons together.
The people in the hotel when she arrived were just those she would have
liked. A little elderly, perhaps, but that was in their favour. And
she knew them all so intimately. She wondered why she had ever regarded
Mrs. Garrett as a consequential old cat. Nothing could have been more
charming than her sympathy and consideration, and the others took their
tone from her. In fact, the subject of her loss seemed quite
inexhaustible.
There were one or two mistakes made, but that was only to be expected.
"Maybe your husband will be being demobilized soon, miss," said Peter
Gurney to her a couple of days after her arrival, as she stood on the
first tee. To him she would always be miss, and with a faint smile Ruth
Seaton turned towards him with her ball in her hand.
"He was killed, Peter," she said--"killed on the Somme." Then she drove
a low, clean-hit shot straight up the centre of the course. For a few
moments he watched her slim figure as she walked after her ball, and
then he went into his shop.
"Hit me over the head with yon niblick, Bob," he remarked, in a voice
which was not quite steady. "I surely am a damned, dunderheaded old
fool."
She seemed so wonderfully plucky, and even the secretary of the golf
club descended from his exalted position temporarily and discussed the
matter with Peter Gurney.
He disguised it well--interpolated it in between an argument on the
rival merits of two top dressings for the greens: and it was only when
he retired again to his sanctum that it struck him that any decision on
those rival merits was as unsettled as ever. But then Gurney was such
an old fool at times--quite unable to concentrate his attention on the
point at issue.
It was on the third day after her arrival that the man came. Hugh
Ralton was not a Portsdown habitue, but he had once spent a week-end
there, and he remembered the links as being exactly what he
wanted--first-class, without being championship. He had come down to
practise for the Active Service Championship, and he had hoped to find
the Grand empty. An Eveless Eden was what he wanted--golf without
distraction.
It was old John who told him Ruth Seaton's story, told it as if it was a
personal insult to himself, an effort perpetrated by "them 'Uns" on
Portsdown. And at dinner that evening Ralton looked at her curiously.
He noticed the sweet resigned expression on her face, the air of quiet
sadness, and then, suddenly, their eyes met.
She turned away at once and spoke to Mrs. Garrett.
"No, I didn't play to-day," he heard her say. "I just walked round
the--round the old places."
And Mrs. Garrett nodded understandingly at her pudding. She would have
nodded just as understandingly if she had known that Ruth, having made a
special pilgrimage to the hummock by the third tee, had fallen asleep in
the sun. But then, Mrs. Garrett understood nothing. And Ruth herself
was feeling a little puzzled.
"When was Mrs. Seaton's husband killed?" said Ralton to John that night
just before he went to bed.
"The Somme, sir," answered the old man, shaking his head. "Pore young
thing."
But Hugh Ralton only grunted noncommittally and went upstairs.
The next day he played his first round. He was plus one at St. Andrews,
but, despite that high qualification, one of the curses of the lesser
golfer had him in its clutches.
He was slicing abominably, and lunatic asylums are very largely kept
going by golfers who fail to stop themselves slicing.
At the tenth he pulled himself together. Through set teeth he spoke
words of contumely to his ball, and then he smote it. There was no
doubt about the result: it was not a slice. The ball travelled at right
angles to the line of the hole in the direction of square leg--to apply
a cricketing metaphor--and it travelled fast. And as he watched it go,
with somewhat the expression of a man who contemplates a bad oyster, his
eyes suddenly narrowed. Why the devil couldn't women take their walks
on the sea-shore or along the road, or something?
"Fore!" With the full force of his distinctly powerful lungs, Hugh
Ralton's shout of warning echoed over the golf links, and Ruth Seaton,
who was walking slowly over the seventh green, looked up quickly. The
next moment a ball whizzed past her, and disappeared into a big
sand-bunker guarding the hole.
Approaching her rapidly was a man, and she frowned slightly. He was
evidently going to speak to her, and apologize, and she didn't want to
speak to anybody. Certainly not a man.... Moreover, the best people do
not play the seventh hole from the tenth tee on well-regulated links,
and the girl's frown deepened. Incidentally the ball had passed her
rather too closely and rather too rapidly for her to see any vast amount
of humour in the performance.
The man was still some fifty yards away when she recognized him as being
at the hotel.
"I am so sorry." His voice came to her through the still air, and the
frown relaxed somewhat--Hugh Ralton's voice was a very pleasant one.
"I'd no idea there was anyone about."
With his cap in his hand he came up to her.
"Do you generally play a course of your own?" she demanded. "Most of us
find the proper one good enough."
Ralton laughed, displaying two rows of white even teeth. "I abase
myself," he murmured. "The shot that caused me such a heart spasm, and
missed you by----"
"About the distance of a putt you'd have to give even to your most hated
rival," interrupted the girl.
"That shot," he continued, firmly, "was intended for the tenth green."
The girl's lips began to twitch. "I was under the impression," she
remarked, meditatively, "that the tenth green lay over there." She
waved a vague hand. "About a mile away.... I don't think you can be
playing very well, somehow."
Ralton affected to consider the point. "I must confess," he remarked,
after a while, "that there would seem to be some grounds for your
thoughts. But you must admit," he added, hopefully, "that the ball was
going very fast anyway. The direction, I grant you, was faulty, but the
velocity left nothing to be desired."
"What you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts sort of
idea," she said. "Very nice, indeed, but you won't be popular if you
make a speciality of that type of shot. Incidentally your ball is in
there." She pointed to the bunker beside the green, and prepared to
continue her interrupted walk.
"You haven't told me if I'm forgiven yet," cried Ralton. "I really am
most frightfully sorry."
The girl paused for a moment, and her blue eyes were faintly mocking.
"You see," he plunged on, "I've been slicing abominably from the tee the
whole afternoon, and then suddenly at the tenth, for no reason that can
possibly be accounted for, save the latent devilry in every golf bail, I
got the most appalling hook on the beastly thing...."
She started to laugh, and in a moment he was laughing too.
"Just this once I think I can stretch a point and pardon you," she said.
"But in future you must be provided with a man carrying a red flag."
"It shall be done," he answered. "Only for absolute safety, I suggest
the tee beside me." He looked at her tentatively. "Do you play the
noble game yourself?"
The mocking look returned to her eyes. "I don't think that we have been
introduced, have we?" she murmured.
"An attempt at murder is not a bad introduction," he returned, with
becoming gravity. "And, in addition, I can assure you that I know some
very nice people. Two war knights--pickles and artificial
legs--frequently ask me to dinner...."
For a moment he was amazed at the look of weary contempt that flamed in
her eyes. "They're the only sort of people who can these days, aren't
they?" she said. "The rest of us just pick up the crumbs that fall from
the rich man's table and wonder why. You're a soldier, of course?"
Hugh Ralton nodded gravely, and his eyes suddenly rested on the
wedding-ring she wore.
"And you?" he asked. "Are you one too?"
"I don't quite follow," she said, slowly. "My husband was killed on the
Somme, as a matter of fact."
"Ah!" The man's voice seemed studiously non-committal. "That makes it
all the more important, doesn't it, that you should keep the flag flying
... and fight?"
"What makes you think I'm not?" she demanded, staring at him defiantly.
"And anyway, it's no..."
"Business of mine." He concluded the half-finished sentence with a
slight smile. "I know it isn't. Will you forgive me? Somehow I
thought that you would understand." He took two or three steps towards
her. "Somehow I think you do understand.... Don't you?"
The girl made no answer, but only stared with troubled eyes over the sea
to where the low-lying spit of land which flanked Portsdown on the south
merged into the grey mist. It all seemed so grey ... grey and lifeless.
Then she heard him speaking again. "Which bunker did you say the ball
was in?"
"That one." Without turning her head, she pointed it out, and with a
quick sideways look at her averted face, Hugh Ralton walked past her and
retrieved his ball.
"Would you care for a game to-morrow?" He was standing close behind
her, and after a short pause she swung round and looked at him.
"What did you mean," she asked, quietly, "about it being all the more
important to go on fighting?"
"One doesn't want two people killed with the same bullet, that's all,"
he answered. "It makes the damned Boche so pleased."
"Is that the only reason?" She was looking at him anxiously, her hands
thrust in the pockets of her jersey.
"Why, no," Ralton said, gravely. "One always starts off with the lesser
reason. The real, important thing is that you shouldn't hurt the first
casualty."
"And you think he would know?"
"Wouldn't you hate it if he didn't?"
The girl moved a little restlessly. "I don't know," she said at length.
"I can't make up my mind. Sometimes I think it would be hell if he
didn't: more often I think it would be hell if he did."
Almost unconsciously they had commenced to stroll back side by side
towards the tenth tee.
"Do you think it's been worth while?" she asked him, suddenly.
Ralton carefully teed up his ball, and with a full clean swing drove it
over the sandy hummock in front of him.
"Depends how you look at it, doesn't it?" he answered, shouldering his
clubs, and stuffing an empty pipe into his mouth. "We've beaten the
swine."
"I suppose that's the only thing that matters to a man," she returned.
"It's the only thing that matters to you." Ralton inspected the lie of
his ball carefully, and then looked at his clubs. "I think I ought to
get up with a heavy niblick," he remarked, thoughtfully. "What say you,
my lady of the links?"
"Not if you play as you were playing when you nearly killed me," she
retorted. "The ball will go into the sea."
Ralton smiled. "It wasn't me playing then; it was a kindly spirit that
possessed me."
The ball rose towering into the air, and fell dead close to the
pin--that perfect shot which marks the true golfer.
"You seem to have played this game before, remarked the girl.
"Once, when I was very young," answered Ralton, glancing at her with a
twinkle in his eyes. "I'm a bright young lad, ain't I?"
"What is your handicap?" she demanded.
"It used to be plus one," he murmured, examining the line of his putt.
"Then you had no business to try to murder me. It wasn't at all funny."
The ball lipped the hole, and Ralton looked at her accusingly.
"That was you," he remarked. "You've got no business to talk to the man
at the putter."
"It was nothing of the sort," jeered the girl. "Merely a rotten bad
putt." She kicked his ball towards him, and replaced the pin in the
hole. "What are you supposed to be doing," she said, suddenly, "playing
about here by yourself?"
"Trying to loosen some very stiff muscles for the Active Service
Championship," he answered. "Which accounts for me, my lady. Have you
got as satisfactory an explanation for yourself?"
She frowned slightly, but Ralton was apparently engrossed in making his
tee. She waited until he had driven, and the frown disappeared.
"What a beauty!" she cried, enthusiastically. Then she recollected his
remark, and frowned again. "But the fact that you happen to be able to
play golf is no excuse for your being rude."
He turned and faced her with a whimsical smile on his lips. "Was I
rude?" he said. "Ah! no--I think not. Because somehow I've got an idea
that you haven't at all a satisfactory explanation to give of yourself.
I think--I may be wrong--but, I think, you're posing."
"Posing! What do you mean?" The girl's voice was indignant.
"Not intentionally," he went on calmly, "but unconsciously. Only you're
posing just the same." He picked up his clubs and stood for a while
looking at her thoughtfully. "I am going to play this hole," he
announced at length, "and then I am going to tell you a story.... We'll
go and sit on top of that sand dune by the next green, and look out to
sea, and listen to the oyster-catchers.... Poor little devils--those
oyster-catchers! Have you ever noticed how they do all the work, and the
gulls get all the oysters?" He came to his ball, and once again
appealed to her for advice.
"An iron or a baffy?" he queried.
The girl took no notice, but stood with her back towards him. She heard
the clear, sharp click of the club, and involuntarily she looked towards
the green.
"I wonder, my friend," she remarked, "if you're as good at stories as
you are at golf. You're lying dead again."
"I'm better," he returned confidently. "At least I shall be to-day.
Will you smoke?"
Ralton held out his cigarette case, and after a momentary hesitation she
took one.
"Come and let's find a good spot," he said. "You'll only put me off my
putt again if we go to the green...."
In silence they sought a sheltered hollow on the side of the dune, and
it was not till Ruth Seaton had settled herself comfortably that she
broke the silence.
"I don't often do this sort of thing, you know," she said, a trifle
defiantly.
"Nor do I," answered the man. "Let us regard the occasion as
privileged."
"Why do you think I'm posing?" she demanded.
"Once upon a time," he began, ignoring her question, "there was a war
on, up the road. A large number of people, to their great annoyance,
got roped into the performance--amongst them a certain man, whom we will
call Jones.... Good old British name, Jones. And Jones had taken unto
himself a wife just before the war broke out."
Ralton was staring at some gulls which circled and screamed over the
shingly beach.
"It seemed to Jones that nothing in the whole wide world could be quite
as wonderful as the girl he had married. She was such a dear--such a
pal; and sometimes he used to look ahead into the future, and just thank
heaven for his marvellous luck. Then, as I said, came the war.... And
Jones went.
"Naturally he had no hesitation--no more had she. It was the only
conceivable thing that any man could do. He trained along with the rest
of the New Army, and he went to France." Ralton smiled. "You will
notice that Jones and Mrs. Jones were very, very ordinary beings--like,
shall we say, you and I."
"Stories about ordinary beings are the only ones that really matter,"
said the girl. "What did Jones do in France?"
"What thousands of other Joneses have done," answered Ralton. "He
wasn't particularly brave, and he wasn't particularly cowardly; he was
just an ordinary man who carried on because he couldn't do anything
else, and thought in his spare time quite a lot about--the one at home.
You see--it was shortly going to be two: and that makes a man
think--quite a deal, especially when he's away at a war.... Have you
got any children?" he asked, abruptly.
The girl shook her head, and after a while he went on.
"It was just before a battle that he got the wire he had been expecting,
and after he'd read it he sat staring at it dazedly. It just couldn't
be; of course there was a mistake. There must be. He knew that
sometimes women did die at such times; but ... but not his woman. It
couldn't be his wife that was dead--the thing was preposterous. Such a
thing couldn't happen, any more than the one man's name can ever appear
in the casualty list. Other names perhaps--but not his."
He hit at a tuft of grass with the club in his hand. "At last it
penetrated into his brain, and by that time the battle was over. He
gathered that he had done rather well--been recommended for a decoration
of sorts, and he laughed like hell at the folly of it all. He felt he
only wanted one thing, and that was to go after his girl. He didn't
care a rap about the son he'd never seen; he knew it was being well
looked after, and he wouldn't even go on leave to see it. It was only
the girl he thought about, and she--well, she was unattainable except by
one method. So he deliberately set to work to secure that method."
Ralton's eyes were fixed on the girl now, and her cigarette had dropped
unheeded on the grass.
"He ran the most unheard-of risks; he volunteered for any and every
stunt that came along--but the Boche seemed to miss him on purpose. For
weeks and months it continued--but it was no good: he bore a charmed
life.
"And now, my lady of the links, comes the point. There came a time--one
night, to be exact--when in the silence of his dugout a thought crept
into his mind, a nasty, persistent thought. He was furious at the
thought; he argued with it fiercely--but the thought remained. And so,
in order to prove that the thought was wrong, he redoubled his efforts
to secure the end which he assured himself he wanted. Before he had
been foolish, now he became damned foolish. He did the most utterly
stupid things, just to prove to himself that he intended to die; and
Fate decreed otherwise. He didn't die--but one evening the other man
did----"
"I don't quite follow," said the girl. "What other man?"
"His orderly," said Ralton, briefly. "Quite unnecessarily he was
walking up a road in full sight of the Boches. They were some distance
away--true; but a rifle-bullet carries some distance. Behind him was
his orderly." With a frown he looked at the girl beside him. "You've
never heard a rifle-bullet probably," he continued, after a moment.
"Never heard that sudden ping past your head which sounds like a huge
mosquito. He heard it that evening--twice; and the first time he took
no notice. You understand, don't you, that there was no necessity for
him to have been on the road?"
She nodded.
"The second bullet did not miss. It hit the orderly, and Jones just got
him into the ditch beside the road before he died...."
Ralton was examining his niblick with unusual care. "This old club
seems to have suffered some."
"Is that your story?" demanded the girl.
"Yes, that is the story. The story of a man who posed."
"You mean..." began Ruth Seaton, tentatively.
"I mean that the thought which had come to him in his dugout, the
thought which he had striven so hard against, was that he didn't really
want to die. He was young, and his wife's death was beginning to lose
its sting. He wanted to live; to see his son; and he posed because he
thought it was disloyal to her memory. He posed even to himself. And
it was only as he knelt over the man in the ditch that he realized
it...." Ralton turned to the girl impulsively. "My dear," he cried,
"he learned his lesson at a great price--the price of a man's life.
There is no call for you to do that. But you're young, and life, and
all that it means, is crying out to you. And you're posing. The
sympathy of all those people at the hotel isn't real sympathy; and you
know it isn't. They're posing, too. When things are really cutting
one, when one's really up against it, one's just got to go away and
hide. The crowd is no use then." He stood up and looked at her with a
grave smile. "He won't think it disloyal, believe me. You see--he
understands."
She watched the tall, straight figure striding away towards the green
where his ball lay, and then for a long while she sat motionless staring
out to sea. Once or twice she saw him in the distance, as he continued
on his solitary round, until a sudden shiver of cold warned her that
March at Portsdown was not the ideal month for sitting out-of-doors.
She rose, and started to walk towards the club-house. In her path lay
the seventeenth green, and as she reached the pin she paused. Not a soul
was in sight: save for the screaming gulls the girl was alone in the
falling dusk.
"Jimmy," she said aloud, "it was here you holed that fifteen-yard putt.
Do you remember, old man? It was behind that mound you kissed me for
the first time. D'you remember, old man? I shan't forget--ever. But
it's just a dream, Jimmy, a beautiful dream; and one mustn't pay too
much attention to dreams, must one--not after they've gone? You won't
think I'm a blighter, boy, will you? _but_ it has lost its sting. You
know what it was--at first. But now--oh! my dear--he's right, that
stranger. I've been posing. And, Jimmy, I'm going to stop. You'll
understand, lad ... and you'll be glad too, won't you--for my sake?"
She glanced from one well-remembered spot to another; then,
deliberately, she looked up into the grey sky.
"_Au revoir_, old chap.... God bless you."
It all depended on a four-foot putt. If Ralton holed out, the match
would be all square, and they would have to play the nineteenth. By
faultless golf he had pulled his opponent down from dormy three at the
sixteenth, and now at the last hole he was left with what seemed a
certainty, judging by his form up to date. And, as so often happens
with certainties, it failed to come off.
The ball lipped the hole--hesitated, and stopped a bare inch from the
edge. For a moment Ralton looked at it, and then, with a grin,
congratulated the victor and strode through the crowd around the green.
"Bad luck, sir--bad luck." Complete strangers condoled with him as he
passed them, and Ralton smiled his thanks. The game had been a good
one, which was all that mattered; and now that it was over, there was no
reason why he shouldn't return at once to Portsdown-on-Sea. It was a
nice place, he told himself--good golf--and...
"Well played, my friend--well played." He stopped abruptly, and stared
at the speaker.
"You! But what are you doing here?"
"I understood it was a public place," she murmured.
"I thought you were at Portsdown," he said, slowly.
"I was until last night," she answered. "I'm going back to-morrow."
"So am I." Ralton smiled. "I wonder if you'd help me on the journey."
"Help you?" The girl seemed a little surprised.
"I'm taking down my small son," he explained, "and I feel certain I
shall lose the nurse."
She looked at him in silence for a while. "Why, yes, Mr. ... er ...
Jones," and her voice was very low, "I think I might be able to manage
it--now."