“You did, did you?” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“I said I did,” retorted Bradbury, defiantly.
“So did I. I said you did, did you?”
“What do you mean, did you?”
“Well, you did, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Exactly what I said. You did. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Yes, you did!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
Once again Bradbury felt vaguely uneasy. There was nothing in the actual dialogue which had just taken place to cause him alarm—indeed, considered purely as dialogue, it was bright and snappy and well calculated to make things gay about the home. But once more there had been a subtle something in his mother-in-law’s manner which had jarred upon him. He mumbled and went off to dress for dinner.
“Ha!” said Mrs. Maplebury, as the door closed.
Such, then, was the position of affairs in the Fisher home. And now that I have arrived thus far in my story and have shown you this man systematically deceiving the woman he had vowed—at one of the most exclusive altars in New York—to love and cherish, you—if you are the sort of husband I hope you are—must be saying to yourself: “But what of Bradbury Fisher’s conscience?” Remorse, you feel, must long since have begun to gnaw at his vitals; and the thought suggests itself to you that surely by this time the pangs of self-reproach must have interfered seriously with his short game, even if not as yet sufficiently severe to affect his driving off the tee.
You are overlooking the fact that Bradbury Fisher’s was the trained and educated conscience of a man who had passed a large portion of his life in Wall Street; and years of practice had enabled him to reduce the control of it to a science. Many a time in the past, when an active operator on the Street, he had done things to the small investor which would have caused raised eyebrows in the fo’c’sle of a pirate sloop—and done them without a blush. He was not the man, therefore, to suffer torment merely because he was slipping one over on the Little Woman.
Occasionally he would wince a trifle at the thought of what would happen if she ever found out; but apart from that, I am doing no more than state the plain truth when I say that Bradbury Fisher did not care a whoop.
Besides, at this point his golf suddenly underwent a remarkable improvement. He had always been a long driver, and quite abruptly he found that he was judging them nicely with the putter. Two weeks after he had started on his campaign of deception he amazed himself and all who witnessed the performance by cracking a hundred for the first time in his career. And every golfer knows that in the soul of the man who does that there is no room for remorse. Conscience may sting the player who is going round in a hundred and ten, but when it tries to make itself unpleasant to the man who is doing ninety-sevens and ninety-eights, it is simply wasting its time.
I will do Bradbury Fisher justice. He did regret that he was not in a position to tell his wife all about that first ninety-nine of his. And the forlorn feeling of being unable to confide his triumphs to a sympathetic ear deepened a week later when, miraculously achieving ninety-six in the medal round, he qualified for the sixth sixteen in the annual invitation tournament of the club to which he had attached himself.
“Shall I?” he mused, eyeing her wistfully across the Queen Anne table in the Crystal Boudoir, to which they had retired to drink their after-dinner coffee. “Better not, better not,” whispered Prudence in his ear.
“Bradbury,” said Mrs. Fisher.
“Yes, darling?”
“Have you been hard at work today?”
“Yes, precious. Very, very hard at work.”
“Ho!” said Mrs. Maplebury.
“What did you say?” said Bradbury.
“I said ho!”
“What do you mean, ho?”
“Just ho. There is no harm, I imagine, in my saying ho, if I wish to.”
“Oh, no,” said Bradbury. “By no means. Not at all. Pray do so.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Maplebury. “Ho!”
“You do have to slave at the office, don’t you?” said Mrs. Fisher.
“I do, indeed.”
“It must be a great strain.”
“A terrible strain. Yes, yes, a terrible strain.”
“Then you won’t object to giving it up, will you?”
Bradbury started.
“Giving it up?”
“Giving up going to the office. The fact is, dear,” said Mrs. Fisher, “Vosper has complained.”
“What about?”
“About you going to the office. He says he has never been in the employment of anyone engaged in commerce, and he doesn’t like it. The Duke looked down on commerce very much. So I’m afraid, darling, you will have to give it up.”
Bradbury Fisher stared before him, a strange singing in his ears. The blow had been so sudden that he was stunned.
His fingers picked feverishly at the arm of his chair. He had paled to the very lips. If the office was barred to him, on what pretext could he sneak away from home? And sneak he must, for tomorrow and the day after the various qualifying sixteens were to play the match-rounds for the cups; and it was monstrous and impossible that he should not be there. He must be there. He had done a ninety-six, and the next best medal score in his sixteen was a hundred and one. For the first time in his life he had before him the prospect of winning a cup; and, highly though the poets have spoken of love, that emotion is not to be compared with the frenzy which grips a twenty-four handicap man who sees himself within reach of a cup.
Blindly he tottered from the room and sought his study. He wanted to be alone. He had to think, think.
The evening paper was lying on the table. Automatically he picked it up and ran his eye over the front page. And, as he did so, he uttered a sharp
