Lord Emsworth and Others Page 13

  When Clarice Fitch, some two years ago, came to spend the summer with an aunt who resides in this neighbourhood, the effect of her advent upon the unattached males of the place was, as you can readily imagine (said the Oldest Member), stupendous. There was a sort of universal gasp, and men who had been playing for years in baggy flannel trousers with mud stains on them rushed off in a body to their tailors, bidding them work night and day on form-fitting suits of plus-fours. Moustaches were curled, ties straightened, and shoes cleaned that had not been cleaned for months.

  And of all those stunned by the impact of her personality, none was more powerfully affected than Ernest Faraday Plinlimmon. Within half an hour of their first meeting, he had shaved twice, put on three clean collars, given all his hats to the odd-job man, and started reading Portuguese Love Sonnets. I met him later in the day at the chemist's. He was buying Stick-o, a preparation for smoothing the hair and imparting to it a brilliant gloss, and inquiring of the man behind the counter if he knew of anything that would be good for freckles.

  But, like all the others, he made no progress in his wooing, and eventually, as nearly everybody does around these parts sooner or later, he came to consult me.

  ‘It is killing me, this great love of mine,' he said. T cannot eat, cannot sleep. It has begun to affect my work. Sometimes in my office, as I start to adjust an average, her face rises between me and it, so that I adjust it all crooked and have to start over again. What can I do to melt that proud, cold heart? There must be some method, if one only knew.'

  One of the compensations of age is that it enables a man to stand aside from the seething cauldron of sex, and note in a calm and dispassionate spirit what is going on inside the pot. In my capacity of oldest inhabitant of this hamlet I have often been privileged to see more than can the hot-blooded young principals involved. I had very clear ideas as to what Clarice Fitch found wrong with the attentions to which she had been subjected since her arrival, and these I imparted now to Ernest Plinlimmon.

  'What none of you young fellows appear to realize,' I said, 'is that Clarice Fitch is essentially a romantic girl. The fact that she crosses Africa on foot, when it would be both quicker and cheaper to take a train, proves this. And, being romantic, she demands a romantic lover. You, like all the rest, cringe before her. Naturally, she compares you to your disadvantage with such a man as 'Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi.'

  Ernest Plinlimmon's eyes widened and his mouth fell open, causing him to look exactly like a fish I once caught off Brighton pier.

  'Such a man as - what was that name again?'

  "Mgoopi 'Mgwumpi. He was the chief, if I remember rightly, of the Lesser 'Mgowpi. I gather that his personality made a deep impression upon Miss Fitch, and that, but for the fact that he was as black as the ace of spades and already had twenty-seven wives and a hundred spares, something might have come of it. At any rate, she as good as told me the other day that what she was looking for was someone who, while possessing the engaging spiritual qualities of this chief, was rather blonder and a bachelor.'

  'H'm,' said Ernest Plinlimmon.

  'I can give you another pointer,' I proceeded. 'She was speaking to me yesterday in terms of admiration of the hero of a novel by a female writer, whose custom it was to wear riding-boots and to kick the girl of his heart with them.'

  Ernest paled.

  'You don't really think she wants a man like that?'

  ‘I do.’

  'You don't feel that if a fellow had a nice singing voice and was gentle and devoted -'

  ‘I do not.'

  'But this kicking business ... I mean, to start with, I haven't any riding-boots....'

  'Sir Jasper Medallion-Carteret would also on occasion drag the girl round the room by her hair.'

  ‘He would?’

  'He would.'

  'And Miss Fitch appeared to approve?’ ‘She did.'

  'I see,' said Ernest Plinlimmon. ‘I see. Yes. Yes, I see. Well good night.'

  He withdrew with bent head, and I watched him go with a pang of pity. It all seemed so hopeless, and I knew it would be futile to try to console him with any idle talk about time effecting a cure. Ernest Plinlimmon was not one of your butterflies who flit from flower to flower. He was an average-adjuster, and average-adjusters are like chartered accountants. When they love, they give their hearts for ever.

  Nor did it seem likely that any words of mine to Clarice would bring about an improvement in the general conditions. Still, I supposed I had better try what I could do. My advanced years had enabled me to form an easy friendship with the girl, so it was not difficult for me to bring the conversation round to her intimate affairs. What in a younger man would be impertinence becomes, when the hair has whitened, mere kindly interest.

  Taking advantage, accordingly, of a statement on her part to the effect that she was bored, that life seemed to stretch before her, arid and monotonous, like the Gobi Desert, I ventured to suggest that she ought to get married.

  She raised her shapely eyebrows.

  'To one of these local stiffs, do you mean?'

  I sighed. I could not feel that this was promising.

  'You are not attracted by the young bloods of our little community?'

  A laugh like the screech of a parakeet in the jungles of Peru broke from her lips.

  'Young what? Of all the human rabbits I ever encountered, of all the corpses that had plainly been some little time in the water . . .' She paused for an instant, and seemed to muse. 'Listen,' she went on, her voice soft with a kind of wistfulness, 'do you think that novelists draw their characters from real people?'

  I sighed again.

  ‘I was reading Chapter Twenty-six of that book last night. There's a meet, and Lady Pamela rides over hounds, and Sir Jasper catches her a juicy one with his hunting-crop just on the spot where it would make her think a bit. What a man!'

  I sighed for the third time. It seemed so useless to try to give my unhappy young friend a build-up. When a woman is to all intents and purposes wailing for a demon lover, it requires super-salesmanship to induce her to accept on the this-is-just-as-good principle an Ernest Plinlimmon. However, I made the attempt.

  'I know a man living in this vicinity who loves you fondly.'

  'I know fifty, the poor jellyfish. To which of the prawns in aspic do you refer?'

  'Ernest Plinlimmon.' She laughed again, jovially this time. 'Oh, golly! The "Trees" bird.'

  ‘I beg your pardon?'

  'He was round at our house last night, and my aunt dragged him to the piano, and he sang "Only God Can Make A Tree".’

  My heart sank. I was stunned that Ernest Plinlimmon could have been guilty of such a piece of mad folly. I could have warned him, had I known that he was a man who had it in his system, that there is something about that particular song which seems to take all the virility out of the singer and leave him spiritually filleted. Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun, singing that passage about Troubled with birds' nests in the hair,' or whatever it is, would have seemed mild and spineless.

  'You have mentioned,' said Clarice Fitch, sneering visibly, ‘the one man on this earth whom I wouldn't marry to please a dying grandfather.'

  'He has a handicap of seven,' I urged.

  'What at?'

  'I refer to the game of golf.'

  'Well, I don't play golf, so that's wasted on me. All I know is that he's the worst yesser in a neighbourhood congested with yes-men and looks like a shrimp with dyspepsia. Weedy little brute. Wears spectacles. Sort of fellow who couldn't say Bo to a cassowary. What do you imagine this Plinlimmon pimple would do if he had to face a leaping lion?’

  'I have no doubt that he would conduct himself like a perfect gentleman,' I said, a little coldly, for the girl's hard arrogance had annoyed me.

  'Well, you can tell him from me,' said Clarice Fitch, 'that if he was the last man in the world, I wouldn't give him a second look. Nothing could be fairer that that'

  I broke the news to Ernest that evening. It seemed to me k
inder to acquaint him with the true position of affairs than to allow him to go on eating his heart out in empty hope. I found him practising chip shots near the seventh green and put the thing to him squarely.

  I could see that he was sorely shaken. He topped a shot into the bunker.

  'Weedy little brute, did she say?'

  'That's right. Weedy little brute.'

  'And she wouldn't marry me to please a dying uncle?’

  'Grandfather.'

  'Well, I'll tell you,' said Ernest Plinlimmon. 'The way it looks to me is that I haven't much chance.'

  'Not a great deal. Of course, if you could bring yourself to hit her over the head with your number three iron -'

  He frowned petulantly.

  'I won't,' he said sharply. 'Once and for all, I will not hit her over the head with my number three iron. No, I shall try to forget.'

  'It seems the only thing to do.’

  ‘I shall thrust her image from my mind. Immerse myself in my work. Stay longer at the office. Adjust more averages. And,’ he said, forcing a brave smile, 'there is always golf.'

  'Well spoken, Ernest Plinlimmon!' I cried. 'Yes, there is always golf. And from the way you're hitting them these days it seems to me that, receiving seven, you might quite easily win the summer medal.'

  A gleam that I liked to see shone through the young fellow's spectacles.

  'You think so?'

  'Quite easily, if you practise hard.’

  'You bet I'll practise hard. It has always been the dream of my life to win a medal competition. The only trouble is, I've always felt that half the fun would be telling one's grandchildren about it. And now, apparently, there aren't going to be any grandchildren.'

  'There will be other people's grandchildren.’

  'That's right, too. Very well, then. From now on, I stifle my love and buckle down to it.'

  I must confess, however, that, though speaking in airy fashion about winning summer medals, I had done so rather with the idea of giving the unfortunate young man an interest in life than because I actually fancied his chances. It was true that, receiving seven strokes, he might come quite near the top of the list, but there were at least three men in the club who were capable of giving him ten and beating him. Alfred Jukes, for one. Wilberforce Bream, for another. And, for a third, George Peabody.

  Still, when I watched him practising, I felt that I had been justified in falsifying the facts. There is something about practice at golf, about the steady self-discipline of playing shot after shot with the same club at the same objective, that gives strength to the soul, and it seemed to me that, as the days went by, Ernest Plinlimmon was becoming a stronger, finer man. And an incident that occurred the day before the competition gave proof of this. I was enjoying a quiet smoke on the terrace, when Clarice Fitch came out of the clubhouse. It was plain that something had upset her, for there was a frown on her lovely forehead and she was breathing through the nose with a low, whistling sound, like an escape of steam.

  'Little worm!' she said.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Miserable undersized microbe!’

  ‘You allude to -?'

  'That bacillus in the goggles. The germ with the headlights. The tree crooner. Ernest Plinlimmon, in short. The nerve of the little glass-eyed insect!'

  'What has Ernest Plinlimmon been doing to incur your displeasure?'

  'Why, I told him to take my aunt to a matinee tomorrow, and he had the crust to say he couldn't.'

  'But, my dear child, tomorrow is the day of the summer medal competition.'

  'What in the name of the eight bearded gods of the Isisi is a summer medal competition?'

  I explained.

  'What!' cried Clarice Fitch. 'You mean that he refused to do what I asked him simply because he wanted to stay here and fool about with golf balls? Well, I'm -! Of all the -! Can you beat it! I never heard of such a thing.'

  She strode off, fuming like an Oriental queen who has been having trouble with the domestic staff, and I resumed my cigar with an uplifted heart. I was proud of Ernest Plinlimmon. This incident showed that he had at last remembered that he was a golfer and a man. I felt that all he needed now was to do well in this medal competition, and the thrall in which Clarice Fitch held him would be broken for ever. I have seen it happen so many times. Golfers go off their drive or their approaches or, it may be, their putting, and while in the enfeebled state induced by this loss of form fall in love. Then one day they try a new stance and get back on their game and do not give the girl another thought. My knowledge of human nature told me that, should Ernest Plinlimmon by some miracle win the summer medal competition, he would have no time for mooning about and pining for Clarice Fitch. His whole being would be absorbed by the effort to bring himself down to scratch.

  I was delighted, therefore, when I woke next morning, to see that the weather was fine and the breeze mild, for this meant that play would take place under conditions most favourable to Ernest's game. He was one of those golfers whom rain or a high wind upset. It looked as if this might be the young fellow's day.

  And so it proved. Confidence gleamed from his spectacles as he strode on to his first tee, and his opening drive sent the ball sweetly down the middle of the course. He holed out in a nice four.

  It was an auspicious start, and had I been younger and more lissom I would have liked to follow him round. Nowadays, however, I find that I enjoy these contests more from a chair on the terrace, relying for my information on those who drop in from time to time from the Front. It was thus that I learned that Ernest's most dangerous rivals were decidedly off their game. Their tee shots at the third had been weak, and at the lake hole Wilberforce Bream had put two into the water. And an hour or so later there came another bulletin. Wilberforce Bream had torn up his card, George Peabody had got into a casual sardine tin in the rough on the eleventh and had taken ten, and Alfred Jukes would be lucky if he did a ninety.

  'Right off it, all three of them,' said Alexander Bassett, who was my informant.

  ‘Strange.'

  'Not so very. I happen to know,' said Alexander Bassett, who knows everything, 'that that Fitch girl turned them down, one after the other, at intervals during yesterday evening. This has naturally affected them - off the tee mostly. You know how it is. If you have a broken heart, it's bound to give you a twinge every now and then, and if this happens when you are starting your down swing you neglect to let the club-head lead.’

  Well, I was sorry, of course, in a way, for one does not like to think of tragedy entering the lives of scratch men, but my commiseration waned as I reflected what this would mean to Ernest Plinlimmon. There is always, in these medal competitions, the danger of a long-handicap man striking his big day and turning in a net sixty-eight, but apart from such a contingency it seemed to me that, if he had kept his early form, he ought now to win. And Alexander's next words encouraged this hope.

  'Plinlimmon's playing a nice game,' he said. 'Nice and steady. Now that the tigers are off the map, I'm backing him. Though there is one of the submerged tenth, they tell me -twenty-four-handicap man named Perkins - who seems in the money.'

  Alexander Bassett left me, to resume his inspection of the contest, and I think that shortly afterwards I must have fallen into a doze, for when I opened my eyes, which I had closed for a moment in order to meditate, I found that the sun was perceptibly lower. The cool of the evening was in the air, and I realized that by this time the competition must be drawing to a close. I was about to rise and cross the green to see if there was anything of interest happening on the eighteenth fairway, when Clarice Fitch came over the brow of the hill.

  I gave you a description of her aspect on the occasion when

  she had been telling me how Ernest Plinlimmon, with splendid firmness, had refused to take her aunt to the matinee. She was looking very much like that now. There was the same frown, the same outraged glitter in her imperious eyes, the same escape-of-steam effects through the delicately chiselled nos
trils. In addition, she appeared to be walking with some difficulty.

  'Has something happened?' I asked, concerned. 'You are limping.'

  She uttered a sharp, staccato howl, not unlike the battle-cry of the West African wild cat.

  'So would you be limping, if a human boll-weevil had just hit you with a hard ball.'

  'What!'

  'Yes. I was strolling along and I had stopped to tie my shoelace, when suddenly something came whizzing along like a bullet and struck me.'

  'Good heavens! Where?'

  'Never mind,' said Clarice Fitch austerely.

  ‘I mean,' I hastened to explain, 'where did this happen?'

  'Down in that field there.'

  'You mean the eighteenth fairway?'

  ‘I don't know what you call it.'

  'Was the man driving off the tee?'

  'He was standing on a sort of grass platform thing, if that is what you mean.'

  'What did he say when he came up to you?’

  'He hasn't come up to me yet. Wait till he does! Yes, by the sacred crocodile of the Zambesi, just give me two minutes to rub in arnica and another to powder my nose, and I'll be ready for him. Ready and waiting! I'll startle his weak intellect, the miserable little undersized microbe!'

  I started at the familiar phrase.

  'Was it Ernest Plinlimmon who did this?’

  'It was. Well, wait till I meet him.'

  She limped into the clubhouse, and I hurried down to the eighteenth fairway. I felt that Ernest Plinlimmon should be warned that there lurked against his coming an infuriated female explorer whose bite might well be fatal.