Chester’s mouth was still open when I began speaking. By the time I had finished it was open still wider. The ecstatic look in his eyes had changed to one of dull despair.
“My God!” he muttered. “If her family is like that, what chance is there for a roughneck like me?”
“You admire her?”
“She is the alligator’s Adam’s apple,” said Chester, simply.
I patted his shoulder.
“Have courage, my boy,” I said. “Always remember that the love of a good man to whom the pro can only give a couple of strokes in eighteen holes is not to be despised.”
“Yes, that’s all very well. But this girl is probably one solid mass of brain. She will look on me as an uneducated warthog.”
“Well, I will introduce you, and we will see. She looked a nice girl.”
“You’re a great describer, aren’t you?” said Chester. “A wonderful flow of language you’ve got, I don’t think! Nice girl! Why, she’s the only girl in the world. She’s a pearl among women. She’s the most marvellous, astounding, beautiful, heavenly thing that ever drew perfumed breath.” He paused, as if his train of thought had been interrupted by an idea. “Did you say that her brother’s name was Crispin?”
“I did. Why?”
Chester gave vent to a few manly oaths.
“Doesn’t that just show you how things go in this rotten world?”
“What do you mean?”
“I was at school with him.”
“Surely that should form a solid basis for friendship?”
“Should it? Should it, by gad? Well, let me tell you that I probably kicked that blighted worm Crispin Blakeney a matter of seven hundred and forty-six times in the few years I knew him. He was the world’s worst. He could have walked straight into the Wrecking Crew and no questions asked. Wouldn’t it jar you? I have the luck to know her brother, and it turns out that we couldn’t stand the sight of each other.”
“Well, there is no need to tell her that.”
“Do you mean—?” He gazed at me wildly. “Do you mean I might pretend we were pals?”
“Why not? Seeing that he is in India, he can hardly contradict you.”
“My gosh!” He mused for a moment. I could see that the idea was beginning to sink in. It was always thus with Chester. You had to give him time. “By Jove, it mightn’t be a bad scheme at that. I mean, it would start me off with a rush, like being one up on bogey in the first two. And there’s nothing like a good start. By gad, I’ll do it.”
“I should.”
“Reminiscences of the dear old days when we were lads together, and all that sort of thing.”
“Precisely.”
“It isn’t going to be easy, mind you,” said Chester, meditatively. “I’ll do it because I love her, but nothing else in this world would make me say a civil word about the blister. Well, then, that’s settled. Get on with the introduction stuff, will you? I’m in a hurry.”
One of the privileges of age is that it enables a man to thrust his society on a beautiful girl without causing her to draw herself up and say “Sir!” It was not difficult for me to make the acquaintance of Miss Blakeney, and, this done, my first act was to unleash Chester on her.
“Chester,” I said, summoning him as he loafed with an overdone carelessness on the horizon, one leg almost inextricably entwined about the other, “I want you to meet Miss Blakeney. Miss Blakeney, this is my young friend Chester Meredith. He was at school with your brother Crispin. You were great friends, were you not?”
“Bosom,” said Chester, after a pause.
“Oh, really?” said the girl. There was a pause. “He is in India now.”
“Yes,” said Chester.
There was another pause.
“Great chap,” said Chester, gruffly.
“Crispin is very popular,” said the girl, “with some people.”
“Always been my best pal,” said Chester.
“Yes?”
I was not altogether satisfied with the way matters were developing. The girl seemed cold and unfriendly, and I was afraid that this was due to Chester’s repellent manner. Shyness, especially when complicated by love at first sight, is apt to have strange effects on a man, and the way it had taken Chester was to make him abnormally stiff and dignified. One of the most charming things about him was his delightful boyish smile. Shyness had caused him to iron this out of his countenance till no trace of it remained. Not only did he not smile, he looked like a man who never had smiled and never would. His mouth was a thin, rigid line. His back was stiff with what appeared to be contemptuous aversion. He looked down his nose at Miss Blakeney as if she were less than the dust beneath his chariot-wheels.
I thought the best thing to do was to leave them alone together to get acquainted. Perhaps, I thought, it was my presence that was cramping Chester’s style. I excused myself and receded.
It was some days before I saw Chester again. He came round to my cottage one night after dinner and sank into a chair, where he remained silent for several minutes.
“Well?” I said at last.
“Eh?” said Chester, starting violently.
“Have you been seeing anything of Miss Blakeney lately?”
“You bet I have.”
“And how do you feel about her on further acquaintance?”
“Eh?” said Chester, absently.
“Do you still love her?”
Chester came out of his trance.
“Love her?” he cried, his voice vibrating with emotion. “Of course I love her. Who wouldn’t love her? I’d be a silly chump not loving her. Do you know,” the boy went on, a look in his eyes like that of some young knight seeing the Holy Grail in a vision, “do you know, she is the only woman I ever met who didn’t
