Bates.”
“Toodle-oo, Osbaldistone,” said Jane, dizzily. Her brain was reeling. She groped her way to the table, and in a sort of trance cut herself a slice of cake.
“Wah!” said little Braid Vardon. He toddled forward, anxious to count himself in on the share-out.
Jane gave him some cake. Having ruined his life, it was, she felt, the least she could do. In a spasm of belated maternal love she also slipped him a jam-sandwich. But how trivial and useless these things seemed now.
“Braid!” she cried, suddenly.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“Why?”
“Let mother show you how to hold that mashie.”
“What’s a mashie?”
A new gash opened in Jane’s heart. Four years old, and he didn’t know what a mashie was. And at only a slightly-advanced age Bobby Jones had been playing in the American Open Championship.
“This is a mashie,” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty.
“Why?”
“It is called a mashie.”
“What is?”
“This club.”
“Why?”
The conversation was becoming too metaphysical for Jane. She took the club from him and closed her hands over it.
“Now, look, dear,” she said, tenderly. “Watch how mother does it. She puts the fingers—”
A voice spoke, a voice that had been absent all too long from Jane’s life.
“You’ll pardon me, old girl, but you’ve got the right hand much too far over. You’ll hook for a certainty.”
In the doorway, large and dripping, stood William. Jane stared at him dumbly.
“William!” she gasped at length.
“Hullo, Jane!” said William. “Hullo, Braid! Thought I’d look in.”
There was a long silence.
“Beastly weather,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Wet and all that,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
There was another silence.
“Oh, by the way, Jane,” said William. “Knew there was something I wanted to say. You know those violets?”
“Violets?”
“White violets. You remember those white violets I’ve been sending you every year on our wedding anniversary? Well, what I mean to say, our lives are parted and all that sort of thing, but you won’t mind if I go on sending them—what? Won’t hurt you, what I’m driving at, and’ll please me, see what I mean? So, well, to put the thing in a nutshell, if you haven’t any objection, that’s that.”
Jane reeled against the gate-leg table.
“William! Was it you who sent those violets?”
“Absolutely. Who did you think it was?”
“William!” cried Jane, and flung herself into his arms.
William scooped her up gratefully. This was the sort of thing he had been wanting for weeks past. He could do with a lot of this. He wouldn’t have suggested it himself, but, seeing that she felt that way, he was all for it.
“William,” said Jane, “can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, rather,” said William. “Like a shot. Though, I mean to say, nothing to forgive, and all that sort of thing.”
“We’ll go back right away to our dear little cottage.”
“Fine!”
“We’ll never leave it again.”
“Topping!”
“I love you,” said Jane, “more than life itself.”
“Good egg!” said William.
Jane turned with shining eyes to little Braid Vardon.
“Braid, we’re going home with daddy!”
“Where?”
“Home. To our little cottage.”
“What’s a cottage?”
“The house where we used to be before we came here.”
“What’s here?”
“This is.”
“Which?”
“Where we are now.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you what, old girl,” said William. “Just shove a green-baize cloth over that kid, and then start in and brew me about five pints of tea as strong and hot as you can jolly well make it. Otherwise I’m going to get the cold of a lifetime.”
The Purification of Rodney Spelvin
It was an afternoon on which one would have said that all Nature smiled. The air was soft and balmy; the links, fresh from the rains of spring, glistened in the pleasant sunshine; and down on the second tee young Clifford Wimple, in a new suit of plus-fours, had just sunk two balls in the lake and was about to sink a third. No element, in short, was lacking that might be supposed to make for quiet happiness.
And yet on the forehead of the Oldest Member, as he sat beneath the chestnut tree on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, there was a peevish frown; and his eye, gazing down at the rolling expanse of turf, lacked its customary genial benevolence. His favourite chair, consecrated to his private and personal use by unwritten law, had been occupied by another. That is the worst of a free country—liberty so often degenerates into licence.
The Oldest Member coughed.
“I trust,” he said, “you find that chair comfortable?”
The intruder, who was the club’s hitherto spotless secretary, glanced up in a goofy manner.
“Eh?”
“That chair—you find it fits snugly to the figure?”
“Chair? Figure? Oh, you mean this chair? Oh, yes.”
“I am gratified and relieved,” said the Oldest Member.
There was a silence.
“Look here,” said the secretary, “what would you do in a case like this? You know I’m engaged?”
“I do. And no doubt your fiancée is missing you. Why not go in search of her?”
“She’s the sweetest girl on earth.”
“I should lose no time.”
“But jealous. And just now I was in my office, and that Mrs. Pettigrew came in to ask if there was any news of the purse which she lost a couple of days ago. It had just been brought to my office, so I produced it; whereupon the infernal woman, in a most unsuitably girlish manner, flung her arms round my neck and kissed me on my bald spot. And at that moment Adela came in. Death,” said the secretary, “where is thy sting?”
The Oldest Member’s pique melted. He had a feeling heart.
“Most unfortunate. What did you say?”
“I hadn’t time to say anything. She shot out too quick.”
The Oldest Member clicked his tongue sympathetically.
“These misunderstandings between young and ardent hearts are very frequent,” he said. “I could tell you at least fifty cases of the same kind. The one which I will select is the story of Jane Packard, William Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
“You told me that the other day. Jane Packard got engaged to Rodney Spelvin, the poet, but the madness passed and she married William Bates, who was a golfer.”
“This is another story of the trio.”
“You told me that one, too. After Jane Packard married William Bates she
