§ 9
Now suddenly a realization of intrusion shattered this conversation. A third person stood over the little encampment, smiling mysteriously and waving a cleek in a slow hieratic manner through the air.
“De licious lill’ corn’,” said the newcomer in tones of benediction.
He met their enquiring eyes with a luxurious smile, “Licious,” he said, and remained swaying insecurely and failing to express some imperfectly apprehended deep meaning by short peculiar movements of the cleek.
He was obviously a golfer astray from some adjacent course—and he had lunched.
“Mighty Join you,” he said, and then very distinctly in a full large voice, “Miss Malleleine Philps.” There are the penalties of a public and popular life.
“He’s drunk,” the lady whispered. “Get him to go away, Dick. I can’t endure drunken men.”
She stood up and Bealby stood up. He advanced in front of her, slowly with his nose in the air, extraordinarily like a small terrier smelling at a strange dog.
“I said Mighty Join you,” the golfer repeated. His voice was richly excessive. He was a big heavy man with a short-cropped moustache, a great deal of neck and dewlap and a solemn expression.
“Prup. Be’r. Introzuze m’self,” he remarked. He tried to indicate himself by waving his hand towards himself, but finally abandoned the attempt as impossible. “Ma’ Goo’ Soch’l Poshishun,” he said.
Bealby had a disconcerting sense of retreating footsteps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Miss Philips standing at the foot of the steps that led up to the fastnesses of the caravan. “Dick,” she cried with a sharp note of alarm in her voice, “get rid of that man.”
A moment after Bealby heard the door shut and a sound of a key in its lock. He concealed his true feelings by putting his arms akimbo, sticking his legs wider apart and contemplating the task before him with his head a little on one side. He was upheld by the thought that the yellow caravan had a window looking upon him....
The newcomer seemed to consider the ceremony of introduction completed. “I done care for goff,” he said, almost vaingloriously.
He waved his cleek to express his preference. “Natua,” he said with a satisfaction that bordered on fatuity.
He prepared to come down from the little turfy crest on which he stood to the encampment.
“’Ere!” said Bealby. “This is Private.”
The golfer indicated by solemn movements of the cleek that this was understood but that other considerations overrode it.
“You—You got to go!” cried Bealby in a breathless squeak. “You get out of here.”
The golfer waved an arm as who should say, “You do not understand, but I forgive you,” and continued to advance towards the fire. And then Bealby, at the end of his tact, commenced hostilities.
He did so because he felt he had to do something, and he did not know what else to do.
“Wan’ nothin’ but frenly conversation sushus custm’ry webred peel,” the golfer was saying, and then a large fragment of turf hit him in the neck, burst all about him and stopped him abruptly.
He remained for some lengthy moments too astonished for words. He was not only greatly surprised, but he chose to appear even more surprised than he was. In spite of the brown-black mould upon his cheek and brow and a slight displacement of his cap, he achieved a sort of dignity. He came slowly to a focus upon Bealby, who stood by the turf pile grasping a second missile. The cleek was extended sceptre-wise.
“Replace the—Divot.”
“You go orf,” said Bealby. “I’ll chuck it if you don’t. I tell you fair.”
“Replace the—Divot,” roared the golfer again in a voice of extraordinary power.
“You—you go!” said Bealby.
“Am I t’ask you. Third time. Reshpect—Roos.... Replace the Divot.”
It struck him fully in the face.
He seemed to emerge through the mould. He was blinking but still dignified. “Tha’—was intentional,” he said.
He seemed to gather himself together....
Then suddenly and with a surprising nimbleness he discharged himself at Bealby. He came with astonishing swiftness. He got within a foot of him. Well, it was for Bealby that he had learnt to dodge in the village playground. He went down under the golfer’s arm and away round the end of the stack, and the golfer with his force spent in concussion remained for a time clinging to the turf pile and apparently trying to remember how he got there. Then he was reminded of recent occurrences by a shrill small voice from the other side of the stack.
“You gow away!” said the voice. “Can’t you see you’re annoying a lady? You gow away.”
“Nowish—’noy anyone. Pease wall wirl.”
But this was subterfuge. He meant to catch that boy. Suddenly and rather brilliantly he turned the flank of the turf pile and only a couple of loose turfs at the foot of the heap upset his calculations. He found himself on all fours on ground from which it was difficult to rise. But he did not lose heart. “Boy—hic—scow,” he said, and became for a second rush a nimble quadruped.
Again he got quite astonishingly near to Bealby, and then in an instant was on his feet and running across the encampment after him. He succeeded in kicking over the kettle, and the patent cooker, without any injury to himself or loss of pace, and succumbed only to the sharp turn behind the end of the caravan and the steps. He hadn’t somehow thought of the steps. So he went down rather heavily. But now the spirit of a fine man was roused. Regardless of the scream from inside that had followed his collapse, he was up and in pursuit almost instantly. Bealby only escaped the swiftness of his rush by jumping the shafts and going away across the front of the caravan to the turf pile again. The golfer tried to jump the shafts too, but he was not equal to that. He did in a manner jump. But it was almost as much diving as jumping. And there was something in it almost like the curvetting of a Great Horse....
When Bealby turned at the crash, the golfer was already on all fours again and trying very busily to crawl out between the shaft and the front wheel. He would have been more successful in doing this if he had not begun by putting his arm through the wheel. As it was, he was trying to do too much; he was trying to crawl out at two points at once and getting very rapidly annoyed at his inability to do so. The caravan was shifting slowly forward....
It was manifest to Bealby that getting this man to go was likely to be a much more lengthy business than he had supposed.
He surveyed the situation for a moment, and then realizing the entanglement of his opponent, he seized a camp-stool by one leg, went round by the steps and attacked the prostrate enemy from the rear with effectual but inconclusive fury. He hammered....
“Steady on, young man,” said a voice, and he was seized from behind. He turned—to discover himself in the grip of a second golfer....
Another! Bealby fought in a fury of fear....
He bit an arm—rather too tweedy to feel much—and got in a couple of shinners—alas! that they were only slippered shinners!—before he was overpowered....
A cuffed, crumpled, disarmed and panting Bealby found himself watching the careful extraction of the first golfer from the front wheel. Two friends assisted that gentleman with a reproachful gentleness, and his repeated statements that he was all right seemed to reassure them greatly. Altogether there were now four golfers in the field, counting the pioneer.
“He was after this devil of a boy,” said the one who held Bealby.
“Yes, but how did he get here?” asked the man who was gripping Bealby.
“Feel better now?” said the third, helping the first comer to his uncertain feet. “Let me have your cleek o, man.... You won’t want your cleek....”
Across the heather, lifting their heads a little, came Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Geedge, returning from their walk. They were wondering whoever their visitors could be.
And then like music after a dispute came Madeleine Philips, a beautiful blue-robed thing, coming slowly with a kind of wonder on her face, out of the caravan and down the steps. Instinctively everybody turned to her. The drunkard with a gesture released himself from his supporter and stood erect. His cap was replaced upon him—obliquely. His cleek had been secured.
“I heard a noise,” said Madeleine, lifting her pretty chin and speaking in her sweetest tones. She looked her enquiries....
She surveyed the three sober men with a practised eye. She chose the tallest, a fair, serious-looking young man standing conveniently at the drunkard’s elbow.
“Will you please take your friend away,” she said, indicating the offender with her beautiful white hand.
“Simly,” he said in a slightly subdued voice, “simly coring.”
Everybody tried for a moment to understand him.
“Look here, old man, you’ve got no business here,” said the fair young man. “You’d better come back to the club house.”
The drunken man stuck to his statement. “Simly coring,” he said a little louder.
“I think,” said a little bright-eyed man with a very cheerful yellow vest, “I think he’s apologizing. I hope so.”
The drunken man nodded his head. That among other matters.
The tall young man took his arm, but he insisted on his point. “Simly coring,” he said with emphasis. “If—if—done wan’ me to cor. Notome. Nottot.... Mean’ say. Nottot tat-tome. Nottotome. Orny way—sayin’ not-ome. No wish ’trude. No wish ’all.”
“Well, then, you see, you’d better come away.”
“I ars’ you—are you tome? Miss—Miss Pips.” He appealed to Miss Philips.
“If you’d answer him—” said the tall young man.
“No, sir,” she said with great dignity and the pretty chin higher than ever. “I am not at home.”
“Nuthin’ more t’ say then,” said the drunken man, and with a sudden stoicism he turned away.
“Come,” he said, submitting to support.
“Simly orny arfnoon cor,” he said generally and permitted himself to be led off.
“Orny frenly cor....”
For some time he was audible as he receded, explaining in a rather condescending voice the extreme social correctness of his behaviour. Just for a moment or so there was a slight tussle, due to his desire to return and leave cards....
He was afterwards seen to be distributing a small handful of visiting cards amidst the heather with his free arm, rather in the manner of a paper chase—but much more gracefully....
Then decently and in order he was taken out of sight....