KEEPING IN WITH VOSPER
The young man in the heather-mixture plus fours, who for some time
had been pacing the terrace above the ninth green like an imprisoned
jaguar, flung himself into a chair and uttered a snort of anguish.
“Women,” said the young man, “are the limit.”
The Oldest Member, ever ready to sympathise with youth in affliction,
turned a courteous ear.
“What,” he inquired, “has the sex been pulling on you now?”
“My wife is the best little woman in the world.”
“I can readily believe it.”
“But,” continued the young man, “I would like to bean her with a brick,
and bean her good. I told her, when she wanted to play a round with
me this afternoon, that we must start early, as the days are drawing
in. What did she do? Having got into her things, she decided that she
didn’t like the look of them and made a complete change. She then
powdered her nose for ten minutes. And when finally I got her on to the
first tee, an hour late, she went back into the clubhouse to ’phone to
her dressmaker. It will be dark before we’ve played six holes. If I
had my way, golf-clubs would make a rigid rule that no wife be allowed
to play with her husband.”
The Oldest Member nodded gravely.
“Until this is done,” he agreed, “the millennium cannot but be set
back indefinitely. Although we are told nothing about it, there can be
little doubt that one of Job’s chief trials was that his wife insisted
on playing golf with him. And, as we are on this topic, it may interest
you to hear a story.”
“I have no time to listen to stories now.”
“If your wife is telephoning to her dressmaker, you have ample time,”
replied the Sage. “The story which I am about to relate deals with a
man named Bradbury Fisher--”
“You told me that one.”
“I think not.”
“Yes, you did. Bradbury Fisher was a Wall Street millionaire who had
an English butler named Blizzard, who had been fifteen years with an
earl. Another millionaire coveted Blizzard, and they played a match for
him, and Fisher lost. But, just as he was wondering how he could square
himself with his wife, who valued Blizzard very highly, Mrs. Fisher
turned up from England with a still finer butler named Vosper, who had
been eighteen years with a duke. So all ended happily.”
“Yes,” said the Sage. “You appear to have the facts correctly. The
tale which I am about to relate is a sequel to that story, and runs as
follows:
You say (began the Oldest Member) that all ended happily. That was
Bradbury Fisher’s opinion, too. It seemed to Bradbury in the days that
followed Vosper’s taking of office as though Providence, recognising
his sterling merits, had gone out of its way to smooth the path of life
for him. The weather was fine; his handicap, after remaining stationary
for many years, had begun to decrease; and his old friend Rupert
Worple had just come out of Sing-Sing, where he had been taking a
post-graduate course, and was paying him a pleasant visit at his house
in Goldenville, Long Island.
The only thing, in fact, that militated against Bradbury’s complete
tranquillity was the information he had just received from his wife
that her mother, Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, was about to infest the
home for an indeterminate stay.
Bradbury had never liked his wives’ mothers. His first wife, he
recalled, had had a particularly objectionable mother. So had his
second, third, and fourth. And the present holder of the title appeared
to him to be scratch. She had a habit of sniffing in a significant way
whenever she looked at him, and this can never make for a spirit of
easy comradeship between man and woman. Given a free hand, he would
have tied a brick to her neck and dropped her in the water-hazard
at the second; but, realising that this was but a Utopian dream, he
sensibly decided to make the best of things and to content himself
with jumping out of window whenever she came into a room in which he
happened to be sitting.
His mood, therefore, as he sat in his Louis Quinze library on the
evening on which this story opens, was perfectly contented. And when
there was a knock at the door and Vosper entered, no foreboding came to
warn him that the quiet peace of his life was about to be shattered.
“Might I have a word, sir?” said the butler.
“Certainly, Vosper. What is it?”
Bradbury Fisher beamed upon the man. For the hundredth time, as he eyed
him, he reflected how immeasurably superior he was to the departed
Blizzard. Blizzard had been fifteen years with an earl, and no one
disputes that earls are all very well in their way. But they are
not dukes. About a butler who has served in a ducal household there
is something which cannot be duplicated by one who has passed the
formative years of his butlerhood in humbler surroundings.
“It has to do with Mr. Worple, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Mr. Worple,” said the butler, gravely, “must go. I do not like his
laugh, sir.”
“Eh?”
“It is too hearty, sir. It would not have done for the Duke.”
Bradbury Fisher was an easy-going man, but he belonged to a free race.
For freedom his fathers had fought and, if he had heard the story
correctly, bled. His eyes flashed.
“Oh!” he cried. “Oh, indeed!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is zat so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you something, Bill--”
“My name is Hildebrand, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you, whatever your scarlet name is, that no butler
is going to boss me in my own home. You can darned well go yourself.”
“Very good, sir.”
Vosper withdrew like an ambassador who has received his papers; and
presently there was a noise without like hens going through a hedge,
and Mrs. Fisher plunged in.
“Bradbury,” she cried, “are you mad? Of course Mr. Worple must go if
Vosper says so. Don’t you realise that Vosper will leave us if we don’t
humour him?”
“I should worry about him leaving!”
A strange, set look came into Mrs. Fisher’s face.
“Bradbury,” she said, “if Vosper leaves us, I shall die. And, what is
more, just before dying I shall get a divorce. Yes, I will.”
“But, darling,” gasped Bradbury, “Rupert Worple! Old Rupie Worple!
We’ve been friends all our lives.”
“I don’t care.”
“We were freshers at Sing-Sing together.”
“I don’t care.”
“We were initiated into the same Frat, the dear old Cracka-Bitta-Rock,
on the same day.”
“I don’t care. Heaven has sent me the perfect butler, and I’m not going
to lose him.”
There was a tense silence.
“Ah, well!” said Bradbury Fisher with a deep sigh.
That night he broke the news to Rupert Worple.
“I never thought,” said Rupert Worple sadly, “when we sang together on
the glee-club at the old Alma Mater, that it would ever come to this.”
“Nor I,” said Bradbury Fisher. “But so it must be. You wouldn’t have
done for the Duke, Rupie, you wouldn’t have done for the Duke.”
“Good-bye, Number 8,097,564,” said Rupert Worple in a low voice.
“Good-bye, Number 8,097,565,” whispered Bradbury Fisher.
And with a silent hand-clasp the two friends parted.
* * * * *
With the going of Rupert Worple a grey cloud seemed to settle upon the
glowing radiance of Bradbury Fisher’s life. Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury
duly arrived; and, having given a series of penetrating sniffs as he
greeted her in the entrance-hall, dug herself in and settled down to
what looked like the visit of a lifetime. And then, just as Bradbury’s
cup seemed to be full to overflowing, Mrs. Fisher drew him aside one
evening.
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher. “I have some good news for you.”
“Is your mother leaving?” asked Bradbury eagerly.
“Of course not. I said good news. I am taking up golf again.”
Bradbury Fisher clutched at the arms of his chair, and an ashen pallor
spread itself over his clean-cut face.
“What did you say?” he muttered.
“I’m taking up golf again. Won’t it be nice? We’ll be able to play
together every day.”
Bradbury Fisher shuddered strongly. It was many years since he had
played with his wife, but, like an old wound, the memory of it still
troubled him occasionally.
“It was Vosper’s idea.”
“Vosper!”
A sudden seething fury gripped Bradbury. This pestilent butler was an
absolute home-wrecker. He toyed with the idea of poisoning Vosper’s
port. Surely, if he were to do so, a capable lawyer could smooth things
over and get him off with, at the worst, a nominal fine.
“Vosper says I need exercise. He says he does not like my wheezing.”
“Your what?”
“My wheezing. I do wheeze, you know.”
“Well, so does he.”
“Yes, but a good butler is expected to wheeze. A wheezing woman is
quite a different thing. My wheezing would never have done for the
Duke, Vosper says.”
Bradbury Fisher breathed tensely.
“Ha!” he said.
“I think it’s so nice of him, Bradbury. It shows he has our interests
at heart, just like a faithful old retainer. He says wheezing is an
indication of heightened blood-pressure and can be remedied by gentle
exercise. So we’ll have our first round to-morrow morning, shall we?”
“Just as you say,” said Bradbury dully. “I had a sort of date to make
one of a foursome with three men at the club, but--”
“Oh, you don’t want to play with those silly men any more. It will be
much nicer, just you and I playing together.”
* * * * *
It has always seemed to me a strange and unaccountable thing that
nowadays, when gloom is at such a premium in the world’s literature and
all around us stern young pessimists are bringing home the bacon with
their studies in the greyly grim, no writer has thought of turning his
pen to a realistic portrayal of the golfing wife. No subject could be
more poignant, and yet it has been completely neglected. One can only
suppose that even modern novelists feel that the line should be drawn
somewhere.
Bradbury Fisher’s emotions, as he stood by the first tee watching his
wife prepare to drive off, were far beyond my poor power to describe.
Compared with him at that moment, the hero of a novel of the Middle
West would have seemed almost offensively chirpy. This was the woman he
loved, and she was behaving in a manner that made the iron sink deep
into his soul.
Most women golfers are elaborate wagglers, but none that Bradbury had
ever seen had made quite such a set of Swedish exercises out of the
simple act of laying the clubhead behind the ball and raising it over
the right shoulder. For fully a minute, it seemed to him, Mrs. Fisher
fiddled and pawed at the ball; while Bradbury, realising that there
are eighteen tees on a course and that this Russian Ballet stuff was
consequently going to happen at least seventeen times more, quivered in
agony and clenched his hands till the knuckles stood out white under
the strain. Then she drove, and the ball trickled down the hill into a
patch of rough some five yards distant.
“Tee-hee!” said Mrs. Fisher.
Bradbury uttered a sharp cry. He was married to a golfing giggler.
“What did I do then?”
“God help you, woman,” said Bradbury, “you jerked your head up till I
wonder it didn’t come off at the neck.”
It was at the fourth hole that further evidence was afforded the
wretched man of how utterly a good, pure woman may change her nature
when once she gets out on the links. Mrs. Fisher had played her
eleventh, and, having walked the intervening three yards, was about
to play her twelfth when behind them, grouped upon the tee, Bradbury
perceived two of his fellow-members of the club. Remorse and shame
pierced him.
“One minute, honey,” he said, as his life’s partner took a stranglehold
on her mashie and was about to begin the movements. “We’d better let
these men through.”
“What men?”
“We’re holding up a couple of fellows. I’ll wave to them.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” cried Mrs. Fisher. “The idea!”
“But, darling--”
“Why should they go through us? We started before them.”
“But, pettie--”
“They shall not pass!” said Mrs. Fisher. And, raising her mashie, she
dug a grim divot out of the shrinking turf. With bowed head, Bradbury
followed her on the long, long trail.
The sun was sinking as they came at last to journey’s end.
“How right Vosper is!” said Mrs. Fisher, nestling into the cushions of
the automobile. “I feel ever so much better already.”
“Do you?” said Bradbury wanly. “Do you?”
“We’ll play again to-morrow afternoon,” said his wife.
* * * * *
Bradbury Fisher was a man of steel. He endured for a week. But on the
last day of the week Mrs. Fisher insisted on taking as a companion
on the round Alfred, her pet Airedale. In vain Bradbury spoke of
the Green Committee and their prejudice against dogs on the links.
Mrs. Fisher--and Bradbury, as he heard the ghastly words, glanced
involuntarily up at the summer sky, as if preparing to dodge the
lightning-bolt which could scarcely fail to punish such blasphemy--said
that the Green Committee were a lot of silly, fussy old men, and she
had no patience with them.
So Alfred came along--barking at Bradbury as he endeavoured to
concentrate on the smooth pronation of the wrists, bounding ahead to
frolic round distant players who were shaping for delicate chip-shots,
and getting a deep toe-hold on the turf of each successive green.
Hell, felt Bradbury, must be something like this, and he wished that he
had led a better life.
But that retribution which waits on all, both small and great, who
defy Green Committees had marked Alfred down. Taking up a position
just behind Mrs. Fisher as she began her down swing on the seventh, he
received so shrewd a blow on his right foreleg that with a sharp yelp
he broke into a gallop, raced through a foursome on the sixth green,
and, charging across country, dived head-long into the water-hazard
on the second; where he remained until Bradbury, who had been sent in
pursuit, waded in and fished him out.
Mrs. Fisher came panting up, full of concern.
“What shall we do? The poor little fellow is quite lame. I know, you
can carry him, Bradbury.”
Bradbury Fisher uttered a low, bleating sound. The water had had the
worst effect on the animal. Even when dry, Alfred was always a dog
of powerful scent. Wet, he had become definitely one of the six best
smellers. His aroma had what the advertisement-writers call “strong
memory value.”
“Carry him? To the car, do you mean?”
“Of course not. Round the links. I don’t want to miss a day’s golf. You
can put him down when you play your shots.”
For a long instant Bradbury hesitated. The words “Is zat so?” trembled
on his lips.
“Very well,” he said, swallowing twice.
* * * * *
That night, in his du Barri bedroom, Bradbury Fisher lay sleepless far
into the dawn. A crisis, he realised, had come in his domestic affairs.
Things, he saw clearly, could not go on like this. It was not merely
the awful spiritual agony of playing these daily rounds of golf with
his wife that was so hard to endure. The real trouble was that the
spectacle of her on the links was destroying his ideals, sapping away
that love and respect which should have been as imperishable as steel.
To a good man his wife should be a goddess, a being far above him to
whom he can offer worship and reverence, a beacon-star guiding him over
the tossing seas of life. She should be ever on a pedestal and in a
shrine. And when she waggles for a minute and a half and then jerks her
head and tops the ball, she ceases to be so. And Mrs. Fisher was not
merely a head-lifter and a super-waggler; she was a scoffer at Golf’s
most sacred things. She held up scratch-men. She omitted to replace
divots. She spoke lightly of Green Committees.
The sun was gilding Goldenville in its morning glory when Bradbury
made up his mind. He would play with her no more. To do so would be
fair neither to himself nor to her. At any moment, he felt, she might
come out on the links in high heels or stop to powder her nose on the
green while frenzied foursomes waited to play their approach-shots.
And then love would turn to hate, and he and she would go through life
estranged. Better to end it now, while he still retained some broken
remains of the old esteem.
He had got everything neatly arranged. He would plead business in the
City and sneak off each day to play on another course five miles away.
“Darling,” he said at breakfast, “I’m afraid we shan’t be able to have
our game for a week or so. I shall have to be at the office early and
late.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Mrs. Fisher.
“You will, no doubt, be able to get a game with the pro or somebody.
You know how bitterly this disappoints me. I had come to look on our
daily round as the bright spot of the day. But business is business.”
“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. Lora Smith
Maplebury, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.
Bradbury Fisher looked at her coldly. She was a lean, pale-eyed woman
with high cheek-bones, and for the hundredth time since she had come
into his life he felt how intensely she needed a punch on the nose.
“Not altogether,” he said. “I still retain large interests in this
and that, and I am at the moment occupied with affairs which I cannot
mention without revealing secrets which might--which would--which
are--Well, anyway, I’ve got to go to the office.”
“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What do you mean, quite?” demanded Bradbury.
“I mean just what I say. Quite!”
“Why quite?”
“Why not quite? I suppose I can say ‘Quite!’ can’t I?”
“Oh, quite,” said Bradbury.
He kissed his wife and left the room. He felt a little uneasy. There
had been something in the woman’s manner which had caused him a vague
foreboding.
Had he been able to hear the conversation that followed his departure,
he would have been still more uneasy.
“Suspicious!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What is?” asked Mrs. Fisher.
“That man’s behaviour.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you observe him closely while he was speaking?”
“No.”
“The tip of his nose wiggled. Always distrust a man who wiggles the tip
of his nose.”
“I am sure Bradbury would not deceive you.”
“So am I. But he might try to.”
“I don’t understand, mother. Do you mean you think Bradbury is not
going to the office?”
“I am sure he is not.”
“You think--?”
“I do.”
“You are suggesting--?”
“I am.”
“You would imply--?”
“I would.”
A moan escaped Mrs. Fisher.
“Oh, mother, mother!” she cried. “If I thought Bradbury was untrue to
me, what I wouldn’t do to that poor clam!”
“I certainly think that the least you can do, as a good womanly woman,
is to have a capable lawyer watching your interests.”
“But we can easily find out if he is at the office. We can ring them up
on the ’phone and ask.”
“And be told that he is in conference. He will not have neglected to
arrange for that.”
“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, to-day--”
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 to-day 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. To-day 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 to-day?”
“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 all 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 any one 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 to-morrow 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 shall 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 to-morrow 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
rain-bow. 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 curveted 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 touch-down 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 than 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 to-day 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 it 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 musn’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 to-morrow. 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 to-morrow?”
“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 think 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 will 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.”
“Splendid fellow! Splendid fellow! She shall go to-morrow, Vosper.”
“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.