V
"And what are you going to do now?" inquired practical Pip.
"I don't know, I daren't go back. Dad would kill me."
The girl shuddered, and turned to Pip appealingly, as a woman, however strong her will may be, always turns to a man she knows she can trust.
Pip reflected in his deliberate fashion.
"You had better go to London," he said at last. "You know your way about there, I expect. I think you should go on the stage again. You like it, and it will make you independent. I suppose you can get an engagement?"
"Yes, I can manage that," said the Principal Boy. "Drive on now, Jack, and take me to Hunsford Station. It can't be more than a mile or two from here."
Once more the car sped through the gathering darkness.
"I'll go round to the 'Crown,'" continued Lottie more briskly, "first thing to-morrow morning. Jim Lister will get me a shop of some sort, if it's only in the chorus. That'll do to go on with."
"He must be a good chap," said Pip.
"He is," said Lottie warmly.
Presently they reached the little station. Inquiries elicited the news that there would be a train for London in half an hour.
"I'll stay with you till it starts," said Pip.
He ran the car under a wall out of the wind, and continued talking. He was in an unusually communicative mood, for him.
"I was wondering," he said, "why your feelings changed so suddenly in that interview, after you had quite made up your mind to—for the other thing."
"Don't know, I'm sure," said Lottie. "I can't think now what made me agree to the idea, even for a moment. Jack, would you have thought very badly of me if—"
"I think I know what it was," continued Pip, who had been following his own train of thought; "you must have been kee—fond of somebody else all the time, fonder than you really knew, and when the critical moment came, the thought of—of him, though you didn't know it, prevented you from making yourself cheap. Is that it? Don't answer if it isn't a fair question."
"Yes, Jack, it's a fair question."
"And am I right?"
There was a silence. Pip saw a rather strange look settle on the girl's face. Presently she answered, in a low voice,—
"I believe you are."
"Then why not—go to him?"
"Perhaps—perhaps he doesn't want me."
"Are you sure? Is it Jim Lister?"
"No. He's a good boy, but it's not him."
"Ah! That's a pity."
Another pause. Lottie sat very still. She understood now why the idea of marrying the Honourable had become suddenly repugnant to her. The reason was sitting beside her, wondering what the reason could be. Lottie excelled in woman's favourite pastime—playing with fire—but this time she had burnt her fingers.
Pip talked to her a good deal during the next half-hour. Once he said,—
"I wonder what made you confide in me about all this. I expect it was because you spotted that I was a kindred spirit—in the same state as yourself."
"What state?"
"In love," said Pip simply.
"In love? Who with?" asked Lottie, ungrammatically but earnestly.
"I'll tell you if you like," said Pip. He launched into a description of Elsie, reciting his hopes and fears with all the complete abandon of the reticent man when once he lets himself go.
"It isn't often," he concluded, descending to earth again, "that I reveal my feelings to anybody. But I suppose things are rather out of the common to-day."
"Does she care for you?"
"I don't see how she possibly can," said Pip, with absolute sincerity. "But I'm going to ask her for all that."
"When?"
"As soon as I get on my legs again—financially."
"Ah, but when will that be? Debts are awful millstones, Jack."
"Debts? What? Oh, I forgot. Well, they are off."
"How?"
"This morning," said Pip, "I got a letter. It was from old Gresley, the head of the Motor Works where I am employed. His son used to be a friend of mine at Cambridge. The old man's letter is the most astonishing affair. He offers to take me into partnership! He seems to—to have taken a sort of liking for me," he added apologetically. "Isn't it like a fairy tale?"
(What old Gresley had said was this: "Partly because you have always been a good friend to my son, but chiefly because you combine first-class mechanical ability with sound common sense and the power of managing men, I write to ask if you will enter the firm as a partner, on equal terms with Harry. He has brains and you have ballast. Between you, you should sweep the board. I am getting old. Once the business is fairly gripped by you, I shall retire and leave you to run the show together. Give up your present post and come here at once, so that we may discuss matters more fully and settle details.")
"Then you'll be rich again?" said Lottie wonderingly.
"Well enough off, at any rate," said Pip, "to go and have it out—"
"With her?"
"Yes. Here's your train. I'll get your ticket."
Pip put the Principal Boy into an empty first-class carriage, and having shut the door conversed with her through the open window. The engine gave an impatient whistle, but the line was not clear, and the starting-signal remained obstinately red.
"Got any money?" said Pip awkwardly.
"Yes, thanks. Enough to keep me going."
The train still delayed, and Pip said,—
"I say, will you take my advice?"
"Depends on what it is."
"Go to Jim Lister."
"Well—I'll see," said the girl rather brokenly. She had borne up bravely till now, but the prospect of parting from her protector and the coming plunge into the unknown were telling their tale. Suddenly she looked up.
"Jack," she whispered, "come with me!"
The two gazed at each other steadily. Never was there a more direct invitation, and no man knows what thoughts passed through Pip's heart, or how great the battle that was fought and won during that brief minute. At length he spoke.
"I am still your father's paid servant, and until I have seen him and thrown up my billet I must stay here."
Lottie bowed her head submissively. She knew her man.
"But I'll tell you what," continued Pip. "To-morrow I shall be in town. If you still want help, send a line to me at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and I'll come to you."
"You promise?"
"I promise. But you must promise not to write unless you really need me."
Lottie, a little mystified, agreed.
Suddenly the red signal-light turned to green. The guard at the rear of the train broke off an engrossing conversation with the only porter, and waved his lantern. The engine gave a preliminary quiver.
Lottie and Pip shook hands. The girl's eyes were full of tears. Poor Principal Boy! Kindness which asked for nothing in return had been a rarity in her life. Suddenly she said,—
"Give us a kiss, Jack!"
Pip complied, with a satisfactory thoroughness that elicited a humorous expostulation from the only porter, who was passing by.
"Good-bye!" he said. "You'll be all right when you get to King's Cross."
Which cryptic remark was the last he ever addressed to the Principal Boy, for the train glided out of the station, and he never saw her again.
Before leaving the station Pip despatched the following telegram:—
Lister, Crown Theatre, Strand, London.
Arriving King's Cross 7.30. Can you meet me? Want help badly.
Lottie.
The following morning, having discarded his chauffeur's attire and departed from Broadoak Manor, after listening to an eloquent and most enjoyable valedictory address from its tenant, Pip returned to London. At the end of a highly satisfactory interview with the Gresleys he turned his steps in the direction of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, which he had not entered for three years.
He made himself known to those in authority, and announced that he had now returned from "abroad." He then asked if there was any letter for "Armstrong," which, he explained rather lamely, had been sent him under that name, "by mistake."
Yes, there was a note left by a messenger that afternoon. He opened it. It contained a single line—
All's well; and we thank you—both of us!
Lottie Lister.
BOOK THREE
THE JOURNEY'S END
CHAPTER X
AN ANCIENT GAME
I
Somewhere on the east coast of Scotland lie the famous Links of Eric. The district has not changed much, to all seeming, during the last thousand years—or ten thousand, for that matter. Then, as now, the links were a sandy waste, a wilderness of whin, sand, and bent, the home of countless scuttling rabbits and plaintive peewits. Later, perhaps, when William the Conqueror was creating a disturbance in the southern parts of remote England, a tiny fishing town began to grow up round the little harbour reluctantly yielded by the tall red cliffs to the eternal industry of the ocean, and the adjoining strip of low-lying sand-dunes acquired the title that it now bears, derived, it is said, from the name of the Norse king who once landed on this, the only piece of accessible shore for miles, and was there slain, after a bloody battle with the neighbouring lord and his retainers. The town itself will have none of these barbaric titles, but exists smugly and contentedly as Port Allan.
But it was through her little-valued links that Port Allan achieved fame. Two hundred years ago a new minister came from St. Andrew's, and introduced the men of Port Allan to a game called Golf. They took to it in their deliberate, methodical fashion, and laid out a little course on the hitherto neglected Links of Eric. Thither they repaired on fine summer evenings, carrying queer long-nosed wooden clubs and feather-stuffed balls. The golfing minister went the way of all flesh, and his compeers with him, but the golf endured. Generations of slow-moving fisher-folk, ecclesiastical luminaries, and holiday-making scholars—for the fame of the links brought visitors from so great a distance as a hundred miles—all played round the links in their day, recking nothing of Medal Scores, Colonel Bogey, the Schenectady putter, or other modern excrescences. They used their long-nosed wooden clubs to some purpose, and though they did not drive the feather-stuffed ball very far they drove it very straight. Once the great Allan Robertson visited Port Allan. He pronounced favourably on the course, and a word from Allan Robertson in those days was as good as a descriptive article in "Golf Illustrated" in these. And so for many years the Links of Eric grew steadily in favour with golfers.
But one day—one momentous day—the men of England came to the conclusion that golf was the one and only game worth playing, and Scotland the one and only place to play it in. Accordingly, with that spontaneous readiness to suit the action to the word that has ever been the characteristic of an Empire-making race, they migrated with their wives and families across the Border, and proceeded to hew divots from the face of Scotland with an eagerness and bonhomie which was equalled only by the unanimity with which they forbore to replace them. Golf, which had existed for centuries as a sort of religious ceremony, to be cultivated by its votaries in reverent silence and at a strictly processional pace, suddenly became a species of bank-holiday picnic; and those ancient and highly respectable burghs which fostered the game in especial purity were converted into rather recherché editions of Hampstead Heath.
However unpleasant this foray might be for the Scottish golfer, it presented certain compensating features to the Scottish railways and hotel-proprietors. Of remote villages, which had formerly figured in the traffic returns as occasional yielders of a truck-load of fish, there now appeared highly-tinted pictures, with the Company's name at the top and a list of trains at the bottom. The hotel proprietors, on their part, quickly realising that to the average Englishman a golf-course consists of any tract of land in Scotland plentifully endowed with rabbit-holes, hastily staked out a claim on the nearest collection of sand-hills, and advertised to all and sundry that visitors to their hotel would be permitted, for a consideration, to play golf over the celebrated links of so-and-so, "adjoining the hotel."
Port Allan was one of the places which benefited by reason of the boom. The nearest railway station was seven miles away, but the Company quickly remedied that defect, and advertised through bookings from King's Cross. A special time-table was published, decorated at the top with a coloured view of the Links of Eric, in the foreground of which a golf-match was in progress between a gentleman in a sky-blue Norfolk suit and a red cap, and a lady in a red dress and a sky-blue hat. The lady was depicted in the act of driving off from the tee (with a blue putter); while the gentleman, rather ungallantly, had gone forward a few yards, and was engaged in playing out of the first bunker (with a red brassie).
The inhabitants of Port Allan soon realised that to play golf over their own links in summer was out of the question. They accordingly accepted the situation, and, relegating their own golfing efforts to the autumn, turned to the equally congenial task of spoiling the Egyptians. Elderly seafaring men, who had hitherto extracted a precarious livelihood from the grudging ocean, abandoned their nets and took to carrying clubs, the fee of eighteenpence per round which they were permitted to charge being inclusive of a vast amount of caustic criticism, and priceless, if unintelligible, advice.
Behold, then, the Links of Eric one fine morning in early August. Observe the throng of golfers, male and female, young and old. Here you may see Youth, full of slashing drives and strange oaths, and Age, known for his sage counsel and long putts. Here is a schoolboy, with bare knees and head, and a supple swing that makes middle-aged golfers wriggle with envy. Here is a "golfing minister." His clubs are old-fashioned and his ball has been repainted; you will outdrive him over and over again, but unless you have at least a stroke in hand when it comes to approaching and putting, he will beat you. Those two men over there, playing in their shirt-sleeves, are Americans, of course. They are playing very keenly, but they are thinking, not of the game, but of some entirely new and original way of winning it. The fat gentleman is an Englishman. He originally took up golf by his doctor's orders, but by this time is badly bitten. He wears a red coat, adorned with the buttons of the Toadley-in-the-Hole Golf Club, and ekes out his want of skill by the help of patent clubs, an india-rubber tee,—ye gods!—and a wealth of technical phraseology. The couple in the middle of the course, with a highly profane throng waiting behind them, are a honeymoon, and as such ought not to be there at all. Their balls lie side by side in a rabbit-scrape; and they are disputing, not as to the right club to use, but whether Pussy can possibly love Sweetie more than Sweetie loves Pussy. Ah! an irascible couple have driven into them! Sweetie, at once putting a protecting arm round Pussy, turns and glares at them wrathfully, but Pussy, looking distinctly relieved, picks up both balls and impels her newly acquired lord over an adjacent sand-hill to a secluded spot that she knows of, where they can sit in peace till lunch-time.
But besides these anomalies and curiosities—common objects of all golf-links in summer—there are some real golfers to be seen. Here are two young men worth watching. Number One is addressing his ball for an approach shot. It will have to be a cunning stroke, for there is a yawning bunker in front of the green and a thick patch of whin beyond it. If he attempts to run the ball up, the bunker will catch it, and if he plays to carry the bunker, the chances are that he will overrun the green and find himself in the whins. He plays a fine lofted ball, which drops on to the hard green six yards from the pin, and then, with that marvellous back-spin which only a master-hand can impart, gives a curious staggering rebound, and after trickling forward for a few yards lies almost dead.
"Good shot!" remarks Number Two, and turns to play his own ball. It is lying very badly in some bents, half buried in sand. Number Two—he is a left-hander—rejects the proffered niblick and selects a ponderous driving-mashie. Then, with an opening of the shoulders and an upward lift that betray the cricketer in every movement, he gives a mighty slog, and propels a confused cloud of sand, bents, and ball into the bunker guarding the green sixty yards away.
"Too good that time, Pip," remarks his companion.
"Didn't think I could get so far," replied Pip. "However, I get a stroke from you this hole, so wait a bit."
He descended into the bunker, but the ball was reposing in a heel-mark, and it required two even of Pip's earth-compelling niblick shots to remove it. Colquhoun, plus one at St. Andrew's, consequently took the hole in four.
Pip was staying at the Station Hotel, by himself. The motive which had brought him to a distant part of Scotland, to play a game at which he was far from being first-class, will appear in due course. Sufficient to say that it was a strong motive, and an exceedingly ancient one,—a motive which has brought about even more surprising events than the abandonment of first-class cricket, on the eve of a Test Match, by the finest amateur bowler in England.
They finished their match half an hour later, Pip, who was in receipt of a half, being one down. As they turned to leave the last green Pip found himself confronted by a large man in a Panama hat.
"Pip!" cried the stranger—"Pip! Bless my soul! What the blazes are you doing in Scotland in August?"
"Hallo, Raven," replied Pip. "Fancy meeting you, old man!"
They turned and walked up the road together.
"Why aren't you playing for the County?" inquired Pip severely.
"Missis," replied Raven Innes laconically. Then he added,—
"Said we must go away for August on account of the kiddies. I'm taking a holiday from cricket in consequence: golf isn't a bad substitute. But what are you doing here, young man? Aren't you about due at Old Trafford for the Test Match?"
"No," replied Pip, beginning to fill his pipe; "I'm not."
Innes stopped short in his walk.
"You don't mean to tell me," he said, "that they have been such fools—"
"It's not that," said Pip.
"Oh! So you're chosen all right, then?"
"Yes, I'm chosen, but I'm not going to play."
"Great Cæsar! Why?"
"Well, I'm a bit stale, and I'm rather off cricket, and—and I want to play golf."
Now Raven Innes was a man of the world. Moreover, he was a married man,—married to a young and pretty wife,—and married men know things that are not revealed to the ordinary unobservant bachelor. Constant female society sharpens their wits. A woman has only one explanation for all male eccentricities, and Raven Innes had been married long enough to know that in nine cases out of ten this explanation is the correct one. He therefore pursued the conversation on the lines which he felt sure would have been adopted by Mrs. Raven had she been present.
"We have taken a cottage down the road—'Knocknaha,' it's called—so you must come and look us up. No time like the present, so come along now. By the way, my little sister is staying with us—Elsie. Have you seen her yet?"
The diplomat cocked an inquiring eye in the direction of his victim. Personally he had never noticed anything unusual in Pip's relations with Elsie, but in matters of this kind Raven was guided entirely by his wife, and as that female Hawkshaw, whose feminine instincts were infallible in these cases, had long since informed him that there was something in the wind, he was now embarking upon this elephantine effort of cross-examination.
"No, really?" said Pip, who was lighting his pipe at the moment. "No, I haven't seen her yet."
He threw away the match and walked on, his features as immobile as usual. But his old weakness betrayed him, and he turned a dusky red.
Raven Innes noted this portent, chuckled, and inwardly dug himself in the ribs, as we all do when we find that our natural acumen has unearthed a savoury secret.
Nearly a year had passed since Pip returned from "abroad," once more to take his place among his friends and in first-class cricket. During that time he had met Elsie only once—at Pipette's wedding; but he had gathered then, by dint of some artful cross-examination, that she would probably be the guest of the Ravens at Port Allan during August. Had Raven Innes realised that their chance meeting on the links that morning had been the result of a fortnight's planning, waiting, and scheming on the part of the enigmatical young man beside him; that the said young man had abandoned first-class cricket in the height of the season, and taken the precaution of arriving at Port Allan a full week before he knew Elsie was due there, in order to avoid all appearance of having followed her, and had even endeavoured to give a casual appearance to their prospective and greatly desired meeting by withholding his presence for another three days,—Raven Innes would have realised that a superficial blush may conceal a greater depth of guile than the ordinary male intellect can fathom.