“Then you have been playing golf with her?”
“Nearly every day.”
“How is your game?”
“Rather spotty. I seem to be mistiming them.”
I was concerned.
“I do hope, my dear boy,” I said, earnestly, “that you are taking care to control your feelings when out on the links with Miss Blakeney. You know what you are like. I trust you have not been using the sort of language you generally employ on occasions when you are not timing them right?”
“Me?” said Chester, horrified. “Who, me? You don’t imagine for a moment that I would dream of saying a thing that would bring a blush to her dear cheek, do you? Why, a bishop could have gone round with me and learned nothing new.”
I was relieved.
“How do you find you manage the dialogue these days?” I asked. “When I introduced you, you behaved—you will forgive an old friend for criticizing—you behaved a little like a stuffed frog with laryngitis. Have things got easier in that respect?”
“Oh, yes. I’m quite the prattler now. I talk about her brother mostly. I put in the greater part of my time boosting the tick. It seems to be coming easier. Willpower, I suppose. And then, of course, I talk a good deal about her mother’s novels.”
“Have you read them?”
“Every damned one of them—for her sake. And if there’s a greater proof of love than that, show me! My gosh, what muck that woman writes! That reminds me, I’ve got to send to the bookshop for her latest—out yesterday. It’s called The Stench of Life. A sequel, I understand, to Grey Mildew.”
“Brave lad,” I said, pressing his hand. “Brave, devoted lad!”
“Oh, I’d do more than that for her.” He smoked for awhile in silence. “By the way, I’m going to propose to her tomorrow.”
“Already?”
“Can’t put it off a minute longer. It’s been as much as I could manage, bottling it up till now. Where do you think would be the best place? I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you can do while you’re walking down the street or having a cup of tea. I thought of asking her to have a round with me and taking a stab at it on the links.”
“You could not do better. The links—Nature’s cathedral.”
“Right-o, then! I’ll let you know how I come out.”
“I wish you luck, my boy,” I said.
And what of Felicia, meanwhile? She was, alas, far from returning the devotion which scorched Chester’s vital organs. He seemed to her precisely the sort of man she most disliked. From childhood up Felicia Blakeney had lived in an atmosphere of highbrowism, and the type of husband she had always seen in her daydreams was the man who was simple and straightforward and earthy and did not know whether Artbashiekeff was a suburb of Moscow or a new kind of Russian drink. A man like Chester, who on his own statement would rather read one of her mother’s novels than eat, revolted her. And his warm affection for her brother Crispin set the seal on her distaste.
Felicia was a dutiful child, and she loved her parents. It took a bit of doing, but she did it. But at her brother Crispin she drew the line. He wouldn’t do, and his friends were worse than he was. They were high-voiced, supercilious, pince-nezed young men who talked patronizingly of Life and Art, and Chester’s unblushing confession that he was one of them had put him ten down and nine to play right away.
You may wonder why the boy’s undeniable skill on the links had no power to soften the girl. The unfortunate fact was that all the good effects of his prowess were neutralized by his behaviour while playing. All her life she had treated golf with a proper reverence and awe, and in Chester’s attitude towards the game she seemed to detect a horrible shallowness. The fact is, Chester, in his efforts to keep himself from using strong language, had found a sort of relief in a girlish giggle, and it made her shudder every time she heard it.
His deportment, therefore, in the space of time leading up to the proposal could not have been more injurious to his cause. They started out quite happily, Chester doing a nice two-hundred-yarder off the first tee, which for a moment awoke the girl’s respect. But at the fourth, after a lovely brassie-shot, he found his ball deeply embedded in the print of a woman’s high heel. It was just one of those rubs of the green which normally would have caused him to ease his bosom with a flood of sturdy protest, but now he was on his guard.
“Tee-hee!” simpered Chester, reaching for his niblick. “Too bad, too bad!” and the girl shuddered to the depths of her soul.
Having holed out, he proceeded to enliven the walk to the next tee with a few remarks on her mother’s literary style, and it was while they were walking after their drives that he proposed.
His proposal, considering the circumstances, could hardly have been less happily worded. Little knowing that he was rushing upon his doom, Chester stressed the Crispin note. He gave Felicia the impression that he was suggesting this marriage more for Crispin’s sake than anything else. He conveyed the idea that he thought how nice it would be for brother Crispin to have his old chum in the family. He drew a picture of their little home, with Crispin forever popping in and out like a rabbit. It is not to be wondered at that, when at length he had finished and she had
