§ 10
Bealby had been unostentatiously released by his captor as soon as Miss Philips appeared, and the two remaining golfers now addressed themselves to the three ladies in regret and explanation.
The man who had held Bealby was an aquiline grey-clad person with a cascade moustache and wrinkled eyes, and for some obscure reason he seemed to be amused; the little man in the yellow vest, however, was quite earnest and serious enough to make up for him. He was one of those little fresh-coloured men whose faces stick forward openly. He had open projecting eyes, an open mouth, his cheeks were frank to the pitch of ostentation, his cap was thrust back from his exceptionally open forehead. He had a chest and a stomach. There, too, he held out. He would have held out anything. His legs leant forward from the feet. It was evidently impossible for a man of his nature to be anything but clean shaved....
“Our fault entirely,” he said. “Ought to have looked after him. Can’t say how sorry and ashamed we are. Can’t say how sorry we are he caused you any inconvenience.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Bowles, “our boy-servant ought not to have pelted him.”
“He didn’t exactly pelt him, dear,” said Madeleine....
“Well, anyhow our friend ought not to have been off his chain. It was our affair to look after him and we didn’t....
“You see,” the open young man went on, with the air of lucid explanation, “he’s our worst player. And he got round in a hundred and twenty-seven. And beat—somebody. And—it’s upset him. It’s not a bit of good disguising that we’ve been letting him drink.... We have. To begin with, we encouraged him.... We oughtn’t to have let him go. But we thought a walk alone might do him good. And some of us were a bit off him. Fed up rather. You see he’d been singing, would go on singing....”
He went on to propitiations. “Anything the club can do to show how we regret.... If you would like to pitch—later on in our rough beyond the pinewoods.... You’d find it safe and secluded.... Custodian—most civil man. Get you water or anything you wanted. Especially after all that has happened....”
Bealby took no further part in these concluding politenesses. He had a curious feeling in his mind that perhaps he had not managed this affair quite so well as he might have done. He ought to have been more tactful like, more persuasive. He was a fool to have started chucking.... Well, well. He picked up the overturned kettle and went off down the hill to get water....
What had she thought of him?...
In the meantime one can at least boil kettles.