Bradbury Fisher uttered a low, bleating sound. The water had had the worst effect on the animal. Even when dry, Alfred was always a dog of powerful scent. Wet, he had become definitely one of the six best smellers. His aroma had what the advertisement-writers call “strong memory-value.”
“Carry him? To the car, do you mean?”
“Of course not. Round the links. I don’t want to miss a day’s golf. You can put him down when you play your shots.”
For a long instant Bradbury hesitated. The words “Is zat so?” trembled on his lips.
“Very well,” he said, swallowing twice.
That night, in his du Barri bedroom, Bradbury Fisher lay sleepless far into the dawn. A crisis, he realized, had come in his domestic affairs. Things, he saw clearly, could not go on like this. It was not merely the awful spiritual agony of playing these daily rounds of golf with his wife that was so hard to endure. The real trouble was that the spectacle of her on the links was destroying his ideals, sapping away that love and respect which should have been as imperishable as steel.
To a good man his wife should be a goddess, a being far above him to whom he can offer worship and reverence, a beacon-star guiding him over the tossing seas of life. She should be ever on a pedestal and in a shrine. And when she waggles for a minute and a half and then jerks her head and tops the ball, she ceases to be so. And Mrs. Fisher was not merely a head-lifter and a super-waggler; she was a scoffer at Golf’s most sacred things. She held up scratch-men. She omitted to replace divots. She spoke lightly of Green Committees.
The sun was gilding Goldenville in its morning glory when Bradbury made up his mind. He would play with her no more. To do so would be fair neither to himself nor to her. At any moment, he felt, she might come out on the links in high heels or stop to powder her nose on the green while frenzied foursomes waited to play their approach-shots. And then love would turn to hate, and he and she would go through life estranged. Better to end it now, while he still retained some broken remains of the old esteem.
He had got everything neatly arranged. He would plead business in the City and sneak off each day to play on another course five miles away.
“Darling,” he said at breakfast, “I’m afraid we shan’t be able to have our game for a week or so. I shall have to be at the office early and late.”
“Oh, what a shame!” said Mrs. Fisher.
“You will, no doubt, be able to get a game with the pro or somebody. You know how bitterly this disappoints me. I had come to look on our daily round as the bright spot of the day. But business is business.”
“I thought you had retired from business,” said Mrs. Lora Smith Maplebury, with a sniff that cracked a coffee-cup.
Bradbury Fisher looked at her coldly. She was a lean, pale-eyed woman with high cheekbones, and for the hundredth time since she had come into his life he felt how intensely she needed a punch on the nose.
“Not altogether,” he said. “I still retain large interests in this and that, and I am at the moment occupied with affairs which I cannot mention without revealing secrets which might—which would—which are—Well, anyway, I’ve got to go to the office.”
“Oh, quite,” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What do you mean, quite?” demanded Bradbury.
“I mean just what I say. Quite!”
“Why quite?”
“Why not quite? I suppose I can say ‘Quite!’ can’t I?”
“Oh, quite,” said Bradbury.
He kissed his wife and left the room. He felt a little uneasy. There had been something in the woman’s manner which had caused him a vague foreboding.
Had he been able to hear the conversation that followed his departure, he would have been still more uneasy.
“Suspicious!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What is?” asked Mrs. Fisher.
“That man’s behaviour.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you observe him closely while he was speaking?”
“No.”
“The tip of his nose wiggled. Always distrust a man who wiggles the tip of his nose.”
“I am sure Bradbury would not deceive you.”
“So am I. But he might try to.”
“I don’t understand, mother. Do you mean you think Bradbury is not going to the office?”
“I am sure he is not.”
“You think—?”
“I do.”
“You are suggesting—?”
“I am.”
“You would imply—?”
“I would.”
A moan escaped Mrs. Fisher.
“Oh, mother, mother!” she cried. “If I thought Bradbury was untrue to me, what I wouldn’t do to that poor clam!”
“I certainly think that the least you can do, as a good womanly woman, is to have a capable lawyer watching your interests.”
“But we can easily find out if he is at the office. We can ring them up on the phone and ask.”
“And be told that he is in conference. He will not have neglected to arrange for that.”
“Then what shall I do?”
“Wait,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Wait and be watchful.”
The shades of night were falling when Bradbury returned to his home. He was fatigued but jubilant. He had played forty-five holes in the society of his own sex. He had kept his head down and his eye on the ball. He had sung negro spirituals in the locker-room.
“I trust, Bradbury,” said Mrs. Maplebury, “that you are not tired after your long day?”
“A little,” said Bradbury. “Nothing to signify.” He turned radiantly to his wife. “Honey,” he said, “you remember the trouble I was having with my iron? Well, today—”
He stopped aghast. Like every good husband it had always been his practice hitherto to bring his golfing troubles to his wife, and in many a cosy after-dinner chat he had confided to her the difficulty he was having in keeping his iron-shots straight. And he had only just stopped himself now from telling her that today he had been hitting ’em sweetly on the meat right down the middle.
“Your iron?”
“Er—ah—yes. I have large
