CHAPTER XVI
A GAME OF GOLF
Golf at Moretown is "by favor of the Lord of the Manor" played across a corner of the home park, so remote from Melbourne Hall that you have a vista of that fine old house but rarely from the trees, and nowhere at all if you be an ardent player.
Such a description could in all sincerity have been applied to either of our old friends Dr. Philips and the Rev. Harry Fillimore, the vicar of the parish. They played the game as though all their worldly hope depended upon it. The best of friends at common times, difficulty could provoke them to such violent hostilities that they did not speak a word to each other until the after-luncheon glass of port had been slowly sipped. Intimate in their knowledge each of the other, the Vicar knew exactly when to cough that the Doctor's forcible exclamations might not be overheard by the caddies. The Doctor, upon his part, sympathized very cordially with the Vicar when that worthy found himself in a bunker. "Harry, my dear boy, pray remember where you are," he would say, and to give him his due, the Vicar rarely forgot the number of strokes necessary to extract himself from one of these many vales of tears which abounded at Moretown.
Other moments, it should be observed, were those of mutual admiration.
"If you could only putt as well as you can drive, you might play Vardon," the Vicar would tell the Doctor.
To which the reply would be:
"My dear Harry, Taylor could not play a better approach than that. You'll be down to scratch if you go on improving in this way."
Needless to say, such enthusiasm demanded complete absorption in the game and tolerated no liberties. If anyone had told the Doctor of the fall of Port Arthur at the moment of his playing an approach, that man assuredly would have deserved any fate that overtook him. When the stove in the vestry set fire to the chancel roof and did five hundred pounds worth of damage to Moretown Church, no one had the courage to tell the Vicar until he had holed out on the eighteenth, green. "Words won't put the roof on again," the sexton wisely said, "and a precious lot of words you'll get from 'ee while 'ee's playin' with his ball." So the doleful news was reserved for the Club House. "I really fear I ought not to play a second round," the Vicar exclaimed when he heard it; "most vexing, I must say."
These being the circumstances of the weekly duel à outrance, it certainly was astonishing to discover the Vicar and the Doctor talking of any other subject but golf on a day of July some three weeks after Count Odin's arrival at Melbourne Hall. Strange to say, however, they discussed neither the merits of the cut nor the doubtful wisdom of running up approach; but playing their strokes with some indifference as to the attending consequences, they spoke of my lord of Melbourne and of the turn affairs at the Hall were taking. To be entirely candid, the Vicar left the main part of the talk to the Doctor; for the secret which he carried he had as yet no courage to tell to anyone.
"Most extraordinary—not the same man, sir, by twenty years. If he were a woman, I would call it neurasthenia and back my opinion for a Haskell. What do you think of a sane human being letting a lot of dirty gypsies have the free run of the Hall; in and out like rabbits in a warren—drinking his best wines and riding his horses, and lots more besides that the servants hint at but won't talk about? Why, they tell me that he's up half the night with the scum sometimes, as wild as the rest of them when they fiddle and caper in the Long Gallery. What's common sense to make of it? What do you make of it, leaving common sense out of the matter?"
The Vicar looked somewhat askance at the dubious compliment; nor did it encourage him to tell of the strange sights he had seen in Melbourne Park some twelve hours before this epoch-making encounter.
"I hear the men are Roumanians," he said, taking a brussie from his bag and making an atrocious shot with it. "Of course the Earl—this is miserable—the Earl was in Roumania as a young man. Perhaps he is returning some courtesy these wild fellows showed to him. You play the odd, I think."
"Odd or the like, I don't care a—that is to say, it is most extraordinary. Why, they're bandits, Harry—bandits, I tell you, and, unless Mrs. Fillimore looks out, they'll carry her off to Matlock Tor and hold her out to ransom—perhaps while we're on the links. A pretty advertisement you'd get if that came off. A Vicar's wife stolen by brigands. The Reverend Gentleman on the Q. Tee. Think of it in the evening papers! How some of them would chaff you!"
The Vicar played an approach shot and said, "This is really deplorable." He would have preferred to talk golf; but the Doctor gave him no rest, and so he said presently:
"I wonder what Lady Evelyn thinks of it all? She went by me in the car yesterday and Bates was driving her. Now, I've never seen that before.... God bless me, what a shocking stroke!"
He shook his head as the ball went skimming over the ground into the deepest and most terrible bunker on Moretown Links—the Doctor following it with that sympathetic if hypocritical gaze we turn upon an enemy's misfortunes. Impossible not to better such a miserable exhibition, he thought. Unhappy man, game of delight, the two were playing from the bunker together before a minute had passed!
"You and I would certainly do better at the mangle if this goes on," the Doctor exclaimed with honest conviction; "the third bunker I've found to-day. A man cannot be well who does that."
"Rheumatism, undoubtedly," the Vicar said slyly.
A boyish laugh greeted the thrust.
"Shall we call it curiosity? Hang the game! What does it matter? You put a bit of india-rubber into a flower-pot and think you are a better man than I am. But you're not. I'd play you any day for the poor-box. Let's talk of something else—Lady Evelyn, for instance."
"Will she marry him, Frederick?"
"Him—the sandy-haired foreigner with the gypsy friends?"
"Is there any other concerned?"
"Oh, don't ask me. Do I keep her pocket-book?"
"I wish you did, my dear fellow. From every point of view, this marriage would be deplorable."
"From every point of view but that of the two people concerned, perhaps. She is a girl with a will of her own—do you think she would marry him if she didn't like him?"
"She might, from spite. There are better reasons, perhaps worse. You told me at their first meeting that you believed her to be in love with him."
"I was an idiot. Let's finish the round. The man will probably live to be hanged—what does it matter?"
"Well, if it doesn't matter to you, it matters to nobody. I'll tell you something queer—a thing I saw last night. It's been in my head all day. I'll tell you as we go to the next green."
They drove a couple of good balls and set out from the tee with lighter hearts. As they went, the Vicar unburdened himself of that secret which golf alone could have prevented him disclosing an hour ago.
"I told you that I dined with Sir John Hall last night," he said in a low voice; "well, young John drove me home, and, of course, he went through the Park. Poor boy, his case is quite hopeless. He drives his horse to death round and round the house on the off chance of seeing the flash of her gown between the trees. Well, he drove me home and just as we entered the Park, what do you think—why, three or four men passed us at the gallop—soldiers, I say, in white uniforms with gold sashes and gold sword-hilts. I saw them as plainly as I see you now—the Earl was one of them—the young Count another. Now, what do you think of it? Are they mad, or is some great jest being played? I give it up. This sort of thing is beyond my experience—it should be a case for you, Frederick, though if you can make anything of it, I'm a Dutchman."
The Doctor shook his head. He did not doubt the truth of the Vicar's story, but he made believe to doubt it.
"You dined with John Hall, Harry?"
"I have told you so."
"Sixty-three port, I suppose, on the top of champagne?"
"That is mere foolishness, Frederick."
"Admittedly, forgive me—I can be serious and am. Here's an affair which a man might write about in text-books. This grown man puts on a coat he may have worn in his youth and rides like a steeplechaser through the Park. Why does he do it? What's he after? I'll tell you, his lost youth, that's what he's after. Trying to catch up Time and give the fellow the go-by. I've seen that disease in many shapes, but this is a new one. Try to think it out. This young Count comes over from Roumania; he brings these gypsy rascals with him. Their tongue, their dress, their music, speak to the Earl as his youth used to speak to him. He's living for a moment a life he lived thirty years ago. I can see him grasping at the straws of youth every time I go up to the Hall. These midnight carousals are so much midnight madness. The man is saying to Age, you shall not have me. Ten years of respectability go at one fell swoop. He'd sell those he loved best on earth to win back one year of the days which have been. That's my diagnosis. The bacillus, La Jeunesse! And that's a bacillus you cannot cure, Harry."
He was in deadly earnest and the Vicar looked grave enough. In his dim way, he understood the Doctor and believed him to be speaking the truth. Lord Melbourne had been an enigma to him from the first; an aristocrat and not an aristocrat; one of the Melbournes and yet an alien; a man whose mask of reservation the keenest eyes could not pierce; a silent man when one asked for that key by which alone the secret chambers of his mind could be entered. Of such a one any fable might be told and believed. The Vicar understood that he had come face to face with some mystery; but of its witnesses he could make nothing.
"I do believe you are right," he said at length; "there have been tales as strange in the story of the house—generally concerning a lady, I fear At least Evelyn can know nothing of this," he added a little thoughtfully; "it would be a great misfortune for her."
"Heritage has little regard for the fortunes of others," said the Doctor. "I don't suppose she would have married an Englishman—she's not the girl to do it. That comes of educating them abroad—I would sooner send a daughter of mine to fight the Russians than to a school in Paris. Make Englishwomen of them, I say, and leave the fal-de-lals alone. What's it worth to a girl if she can jabber French and has lost her English heart! No, my dear Vicar, England for me and English roses for my home. Evelyn will marry this man because France taught her to think well of foreigners. If she had gone to a Derbyshire school, he might as well have proposed to Cleopatra's monument on the Thames Embankment. I'm sorry for her, truly, but words won't change the thing, and that's the end of it. Let's go and lunch. We have done nothing ill for one morning, any way."
They went to lunch and afterward to the business of a common day. As it fell out, they did not meet again until after church upon the following Sunday, when the Vicar, still wearing his surplice as he crossed from the vestry to the parsonage, found the Doctor waiting for him with the air of one who has important tidings and must impart them quickly.
"No bad news from the Hall?" he exclaimed, so much was that great house now in his mind.
The Doctor, however, drew him aside and told him in a word.
"The Count's gone," he said quickly. "He comes back in October. The Earl told me so himself. She's to marry him in the winter, and that's the end of it, Harry."
The Vicar shook his head gravely.
"The beginning of it, Frederick, the beginning," he said wisely.