I was sitting here that evening, thinking of this and that, when by the corner of the clubhouse I observed young Dibble in conversation with a girl in white. I could not see who she was, for her back was turned. Presently they parted, and Ferdinand came slowly across to where I sat. His air was dejected. He had had the boots licked off him earlier in the afternoon by Jimmy Fothergill, and it was to this that I attributed his gloom. I was to find out in a few moments that I was partly but not entirely correct in this surmise. He took the next chair to mine and for several minutes sat staring moodily down into the valley.
“I’ve just been talking to Barbara Medway,” he said, suddenly breaking the silence.
“Indeed?” I said. “A delightful girl.”
“She’s going away for the summer to Marvis Bay.”
“She will take the sunshine with her.”
“You bet she will!” said Ferdinand Dibble, with extraordinary warmth, and there was another long silence.
Presently Ferdinand uttered a hollow groan.
“I love her, dammit!” he muttered, brokenly. “Oh, golly, how I love her!”
I was not surprised at his making me the recipient of his confidences like this. Most of the young folk in the place brought their troubles to me sooner or later.
“And does she return your love?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked her.”
“Why not? I should have thought the point not without its interest for you.”
Ferdinand gnawed the handle of his putter distractedly.
“I haven’t the nerve,” he burst out at length. “I simply can’t summon up the cold gall to ask a girl, least of all an angel like her, to marry me. You see, it’s like this. Every time I work myself up to the point of having a dash at it, I go out and get trimmed by someone giving me a stroke a hole. Every time I feel I’ve mustered up enough pep to propose, I take a ten on a bogey three. Every time I think I’m in good midseason form for putting my fate to the test, to win or lose it all, something goes all blooey with my swing and I slice into the rough at every tee. And then my self-confidence leaves me. I become nervous, tongue-tied, diffident. I wish to goodness I knew the man who invented this infernal game. I’d strangle him. But I suppose he’s been dead for ages. Still, I could go and jump on his grave.”
It was at this point that I understood all, and the heart within me sank like lead. The truth was out. Ferdinand Dibble was a goof.
“Come, come, my boy,” I said, though feeling the uselessness of any words. “Master this weakness.”
“I can’t.”
“Try!”
“I have tried.”
He gnawed his putter again.
“She was asking me just now if I couldn’t manage to come to Marvis Bay, too,” he said.
“That surely is encouraging? It suggests that she is not entirely indifferent to your society.”
“Yes, but what’s the use? Do you know,” he said, a gleam coming into his eyes for a moment, “I have a feeling that if I could ever beat some really fairly good player—just once—I could bring the thing off.” The gleam faded. “But what chance is there of that?”
It was a question which I did not care to answer. I merely patted his shoulder sympathetically, and after a little while he left me and walked away. I was still sitting there, thinking over his hard case, when Barbara Medway came out of the clubhouse.
She, too, seemed grave and preoccupied, as if there was something on her mind. She took the chair which Ferdinand had vacated and sighed wearily.
“Have you ever felt,” she asked, “that you would like to bang a man on the head with something hard and heavy? With knobs on?”
I said I had sometimes experienced such a desire, and asked if she had any particular man in mind. She seemed to hesitate for a moment before replying, then apparently made up her mind to confide in me. My advanced years carry with them certain pleasant compensations, one of which is that nice girls often confide in me. I frequently find myself enrolled as a father confessor on the most intimate matters by beautiful creatures from whom many a younger man would give his eyeteeth to get a friendly word. Besides, I had known Barbara since she was a child. Frequently—though not recently—I had given her her evening bath. These things form a bond.
“Why are men such chumps?” she exclaimed.
“You still have not told me who it is that has caused these harsh words. Do I know him?”
“Of course you do. You’ve just been talking to him.”
“Ferdinand Dibble? But why should you wish to bang Ferdinand Dibble on the head with something hard and heavy with knobs on?”
“Because he’s such a goop.”
“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have penetrated the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t tell her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond of me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just
