Part 15

During the war, business, even in the height of the season, had not been good. The Get-Rich-Quick brigade, whose horizon was bounded by half-crown cigars and champagne at any and every hour of the day, found Portsdown slow. There was no band and there was no theatre, and there is but little use in drinking champagne at eleven in the morning unless less fortunate beings--professional men with a small income, or wounded officers--can see the deed and gnash their teeth with envy. And the cigar with the band round it quite failed to impress Peter Gurney, the professional at the club-house. He eyed it with disfavour, and ostentatiously stood up-wind if compelled to give a lesson to its proud owner.

"These 'ere links are for gowf," he remarked once in a burst of confidence to Sawyer, his one-legged assistant, "not for the decimation of them stinking poison-gases."

And Sawyer, though he had an idea that something was wrong with the phraseology of the latter part of the remark, grunted an assent.

But, with the signing of the Armistice, visions of better days ahead loomed up in the minds of all who were interested in the welfare of Portsdown. Peter Gurney laid in an increased stock of hickory wood, to make clubs for "them as can use 'em." The secretary of the golf club turned his mind more resolutely to questions of greens and labour, and rent his clothes and tore his hair on the matter of the unemployment bonus.

Up at the hotel the manager considered the advisability of hiring a string quartette for August and September; and rumour has it that old John so far forgot himself as to purchase two new dickies.

"We'll be getting the old lot back," he said to Martha one day. "Men as is men, and can bathe and play tennis and golf--not them diseases in fancy dress, as we've had the last year or two."

It was towards the end of March that four or five of the old habitues arrived. They selected the chairs they had used of old: they all but labelled them with their names. They were the forerunners of the elder generation who remained there throughout the summer and approved or disapproved as the case might be of the children who came later. And by children, anything up to thirty is implied.

It was Mrs. Garrett, the wife of the retired judge, that the manager first told of Ruth Seaton's impending arrival.

"Miss Bannister that was," he murmured to her one evening. "Married poor young Mr. Seaton who came here for two or three years."

"Why poor?" boomed his august listener.

"He was killed in the war," he returned. "She is a widow."

"So one would be led to assume." Mrs. Garrett regarded him judicially. "Unless she has married again."

The manager shrugged deprecating shoulders and passed on. The idea as mentioned by Mrs. Garrett seemed almost indecent.

"We must be very good to her," ordered that lady after dinner in the lounge. "She is, after all, one of us."

Ruth Bannister had married Jimmy Seaton the summer before the war. There had been the time when he was training, and then those wonderful snatched interludes of leave, when nothing mattered save the present. And then had come the news. For a week she heard nothing--no letter, no field service postcard. On the eighth day there came a telegram from the War Office, and the suspense was over.

It seemed impossible. Other men might be killed: other names might appear in the casualty lists--but not Jimmy. Oh! no, not Jimmy--her Jimmy. There never had been such a marriage as theirs: not a quarrel, not a cross word the whole time. And now Jimmy was gone. Somewhere out in that filthy field of mud he was lying, and the eyes that had smiled at her were staring and sightless. Dear God! but it was too cruel....

Never again could she look at another man. Her body was still alive--but her soul, her spirit were dead. They were buried with Jimmy.

"You'll find me just the same, old man," she used to say out loud sometimes--"just the same. There'll never be anyone else, Jimmy--never, never."

Once a well-meaning but stupid friend had suggested the possibility of marrying again, and Ruth had smiled--a sad little smile. Also perhaps it was just a little tolerant: the smile of a parent whose child had asked some particularly foolish question.

"My dear," said Ruth, "I don't think you quite understand. There'll never be anybody in my life but Jimmy. How could there be?"

It was her brother who first dragged her out to a theatre.

"My dear girl," he said, "you can't go on burying yourself like this. Come to a show; it'll do you all the good in the world."

And Ruth, because he was home on leave, just thought it was a shame not to give him as good a time as possible; and so, just to please him, she went.

She looked her best in black--and her brother's "By Jove, old bean--you look topping!" as she came into the room before starting, sounded very pleasantly in her ears. Of course it didn't much matter what she looked like--now: except that Jimmy had always been very particular. He wouldn't like her not to look smart.

It was the second act that made her roar with laughter, and she was so engrossed in the play that she failed to notice her brother glancing at her once or twice with a quiet smile of satisfaction. In fact, during the second act she quite forgot, and it was only as she stood up to go that it all came back to her mind.

"Good show, wasn't it?" said her brother.

She smiled a little sadly. "I suppose so," she answered. "Somehow one doesn't care very much in these days...." She sighed. "But anyway, you liked it, old man, and that's all that matters."

And her brother, who seemed on the point of saying something, changed his mind and remained silent.

It was natural that Ruth should go to Portsdown. It was there she had met Jimmy: it was there they had become engaged. It would be very painful, and in a way she dreaded the tender, intimate, associations that all the well-known haunts would call up to her mind. Portsdown was so woven up round Jimmy--it would seem almost part of him. That sandy hillock, for instance, just beyond the third tee, where they had lazed away so many afternoons together.

The people in the hotel when she arrived were just those she would have liked. A little elderly, perhaps, but that was in their favour. And she knew them all so intimately. She wondered why she had ever regarded Mrs. Garrett as a consequential old cat. Nothing could have been more charming than her sympathy and consideration, and the others took their tone from her. In fact, the subject of her loss seemed quite inexhaustible.

There were one or two mistakes made, but that was only to be expected.

"Maybe your husband will be being demobilized soon, miss," said Peter Gurney to her a couple of days after her arrival, as she stood on the first tee. To him she would always be miss, and with a faint smile Ruth Seaton turned towards him with her ball in her hand.

"He was killed, Peter," she said--"killed on the Somme." Then she drove a low, clean-hit shot straight up the centre of the course. For a few moments he watched her slim figure as she walked after her ball, and then he went into his shop.

"Hit me over the head with yon niblick, Bob," he remarked, in a voice which was not quite steady. "I surely am a damned, dunderheaded old fool."

She seemed so wonderfully plucky, and even the secretary of the golf club descended from his exalted position temporarily and discussed the matter with Peter Gurney.

He disguised it well--interpolated it in between an argument on the rival merits of two top dressings for the greens: and it was only when he retired again to his sanctum that it struck him that any decision on those rival merits was as unsettled as ever. But then Gurney was such an old fool at times--quite unable to concentrate his attention on the point at issue.

It was on the third day after her arrival that the man came. Hugh Ralton was not a Portsdown habitue, but he had once spent a week-end there, and he remembered the links as being exactly what he wanted--first-class, without being championship. He had come down to practise for the Active Service Championship, and he had hoped to find the Grand empty. An Eveless Eden was what he wanted--golf without distraction.

It was old John who told him Ruth Seaton's story, told it as if it was a personal insult to himself, an effort perpetrated by "them 'Uns" on Portsdown. And at dinner that evening Ralton looked at her curiously.

He noticed the sweet resigned expression on her face, the air of quiet sadness, and then, suddenly, their eyes met.

She turned away at once and spoke to Mrs. Garrett.

"No, I didn't play to-day," he heard her say. "I just walked round the--round the old places."

And Mrs. Garrett nodded understandingly at her pudding. She would have nodded just as understandingly if she had known that Ruth, having made a special pilgrimage to the hummock by the third tee, had fallen asleep in the sun. But then, Mrs. Garrett understood nothing. And Ruth herself was feeling a little puzzled.

"When was Mrs. Seaton's husband killed?" said Ralton to John that night just before he went to bed.

"The Somme, sir," answered the old man, shaking his head. "Pore young thing."

But Hugh Ralton only grunted noncommittally and went upstairs.

The next day he played his first round. He was plus one at St. Andrews, but, despite that high qualification, one of the curses of the lesser golfer had him in its clutches.

He was slicing abominably, and lunatic asylums are very largely kept going by golfers who fail to stop themselves slicing.

At the tenth he pulled himself together. Through set teeth he spoke words of contumely to his ball, and then he smote it. There was no doubt about the result: it was not a slice. The ball travelled at right angles to the line of the hole in the direction of square leg--to apply a cricketing metaphor--and it travelled fast. And as he watched it go, with somewhat the expression of a man who contemplates a bad oyster, his eyes suddenly narrowed. Why the devil couldn't women take their walks on the sea-shore or along the road, or something?

"Fore!" With the full force of his distinctly powerful lungs, Hugh Ralton's shout of warning echoed over the golf links, and Ruth Seaton, who was walking slowly over the seventh green, looked up quickly. The next moment a ball whizzed past her, and disappeared into a big sand-bunker guarding the hole.

Approaching her rapidly was a man, and she frowned slightly. He was evidently going to speak to her, and apologize, and she didn't want to speak to anybody. Certainly not a man.... Moreover, the best people do not play the seventh hole from the tenth tee on well-regulated links, and the girl's frown deepened. Incidentally the ball had passed her rather too closely and rather too rapidly for her to see any vast amount of humour in the performance.

The man was still some fifty yards away when she recognized him as being at the hotel.

"I am so sorry." His voice came to her through the still air, and the frown relaxed somewhat--Hugh Ralton's voice was a very pleasant one. "I'd no idea there was anyone about."

With his cap in his hand he came up to her.

"Do you generally play a course of your own?" she demanded. "Most of us find the proper one good enough."

Ralton laughed, displaying two rows of white even teeth. "I abase myself," he murmured. "The shot that caused me such a heart spasm, and missed you by----"

"About the distance of a putt you'd have to give even to your most hated rival," interrupted the girl.

"That shot," he continued, firmly, "was intended for the tenth green."

The girl's lips began to twitch. "I was under the impression," she remarked, meditatively, "that the tenth green lay over there." She waved a vague hand. "About a mile away.... I don't think you can be playing very well, somehow."

Ralton affected to consider the point. "I must confess," he remarked, after a while, "that there would seem to be some grounds for your thoughts. But you must admit," he added, hopefully, "that the ball was going very fast anyway. The direction, I grant you, was faulty, but the velocity left nothing to be desired."

"What you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts sort of idea," she said. "Very nice, indeed, but you won't be popular if you make a speciality of that type of shot. Incidentally your ball is in there." She pointed to the bunker beside the green, and prepared to continue her interrupted walk.

"You haven't told me if I'm forgiven yet," cried Ralton. "I really am most frightfully sorry."

The girl paused for a moment, and her blue eyes were faintly mocking. "You see," he plunged on, "I've been slicing abominably from the tee the whole afternoon, and then suddenly at the tenth, for no reason that can possibly be accounted for, save the latent devilry in every golf bail, I got the most appalling hook on the beastly thing...."

She started to laugh, and in a moment he was laughing too.

"Just this once I think I can stretch a point and pardon you," she said. "But in future you must be provided with a man carrying a red flag."

"It shall be done," he answered. "Only for absolute safety, I suggest the tee beside me." He looked at her tentatively. "Do you play the noble game yourself?"

The mocking look returned to her eyes. "I don't think that we have been introduced, have we?" she murmured.

"An attempt at murder is not a bad introduction," he returned, with becoming gravity. "And, in addition, I can assure you that I know some very nice people. Two war knights--pickles and artificial legs--frequently ask me to dinner...."

For a moment he was amazed at the look of weary contempt that flamed in her eyes. "They're the only sort of people who can these days, aren't they?" she said. "The rest of us just pick up the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table and wonder why. You're a soldier, of course?"

Hugh Ralton nodded gravely, and his eyes suddenly rested on the wedding-ring she wore.

"And you?" he asked. "Are you one too?"

"I don't quite follow," she said, slowly. "My husband was killed on the Somme, as a matter of fact."

"Ah!" The man's voice seemed studiously non-committal. "That makes it all the more important, doesn't it, that you should keep the flag flying ... and fight?"

"What makes you think I'm not?" she demanded, staring at him defiantly. "And anyway, it's no..."

"Business of mine." He concluded the half-finished sentence with a slight smile. "I know it isn't. Will you forgive me? Somehow I thought that you would understand." He took two or three steps towards her. "Somehow I think you do understand.... Don't you?"

The girl made no answer, but only stared with troubled eyes over the sea to where the low-lying spit of land which flanked Portsdown on the south merged into the grey mist. It all seemed so grey ... grey and lifeless.

Then she heard him speaking again. "Which bunker did you say the ball was in?"

"That one." Without turning her head, she pointed it out, and with a quick sideways look at her averted face, Hugh Ralton walked past her and retrieved his ball.

"Would you care for a game to-morrow?" He was standing close behind her, and after a short pause she swung round and looked at him.

"What did you mean," she asked, quietly, "about it being all the more important to go on fighting?"

"One doesn't want two people killed with the same bullet, that's all," he answered. "It makes the damned Boche so pleased."

"Is that the only reason?" She was looking at him anxiously, her hands thrust in the pockets of her jersey.

"Why, no," Ralton said, gravely. "One always starts off with the lesser reason. The real, important thing is that you shouldn't hurt the first casualty."

"And you think he would know?"

"Wouldn't you hate it if he didn't?"

The girl moved a little restlessly. "I don't know," she said at length. "I can't make up my mind. Sometimes I think it would be hell if he didn't: more often I think it would be hell if he did."

Almost unconsciously they had commenced to stroll back side by side towards the tenth tee.

"Do you think it's been worth while?" she asked him, suddenly.

Ralton carefully teed up his ball, and with a full clean swing drove it over the sandy hummock in front of him.

"Depends how you look at it, doesn't it?" he answered, shouldering his clubs, and stuffing an empty pipe into his mouth. "We've beaten the swine."

"I suppose that's the only thing that matters to a man," she returned.

"It's the only thing that matters to you." Ralton inspected the lie of his ball carefully, and then looked at his clubs. "I think I ought to get up with a heavy niblick," he remarked, thoughtfully. "What say you, my lady of the links?"

"Not if you play as you were playing when you nearly killed me," she retorted. "The ball will go into the sea."

Ralton smiled. "It wasn't me playing then; it was a kindly spirit that possessed me."

The ball rose towering into the air, and fell dead close to the pin--that perfect shot which marks the true golfer.

"You seem to have played this game before, remarked the girl.

"Once, when I was very young," answered Ralton, glancing at her with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'm a bright young lad, ain't I?"

"What is your handicap?" she demanded.

"It used to be plus one," he murmured, examining the line of his putt.

"Then you had no business to try to murder me. It wasn't at all funny."

The ball lipped the hole, and Ralton looked at her accusingly.

"That was you," he remarked. "You've got no business to talk to the man at the putter."

"It was nothing of the sort," jeered the girl. "Merely a rotten bad putt." She kicked his ball towards him, and replaced the pin in the hole. "What are you supposed to be doing," she said, suddenly, "playing about here by yourself?"

"Trying to loosen some very stiff muscles for the Active Service Championship," he answered. "Which accounts for me, my lady. Have you got as satisfactory an explanation for yourself?"

She frowned slightly, but Ralton was apparently engrossed in making his tee. She waited until he had driven, and the frown disappeared.

"What a beauty!" she cried, enthusiastically. Then she recollected his remark, and frowned again. "But the fact that you happen to be able to play golf is no excuse for your being rude."

He turned and faced her with a whimsical smile on his lips. "Was I rude?" he said. "Ah! no--I think not. Because somehow I've got an idea that you haven't at all a satisfactory explanation to give of yourself. I think--I may be wrong--but, I think, you're posing."

"Posing! What do you mean?" The girl's voice was indignant.

"Not intentionally," he went on calmly, "but unconsciously. Only you're posing just the same." He picked up his clubs and stood for a while looking at her thoughtfully. "I am going to play this hole," he announced at length, "and then I am going to tell you a story.... We'll go and sit on top of that sand dune by the next green, and look out to sea, and listen to the oyster-catchers.... Poor little devils--those oyster-catchers! Have you ever noticed how they do all the work, and the gulls get all the oysters?" He came to his ball, and once again appealed to her for advice.

"An iron or a baffy?" he queried.

The girl took no notice, but stood with her back towards him. She heard the clear, sharp click of the club, and involuntarily she looked towards the green.

"I wonder, my friend," she remarked, "if you're as good at stories as you are at golf. You're lying dead again."

"I'm better," he returned confidently. "At least I shall be to-day. Will you smoke?"

Ralton held out his cigarette case, and after a momentary hesitation she took one.

"Come and let's find a good spot," he said. "You'll only put me off my putt again if we go to the green...."

In silence they sought a sheltered hollow on the side of the dune, and it was not till Ruth Seaton had settled herself comfortably that she broke the silence.

"I don't often do this sort of thing, you know," she said, a trifle defiantly.

"Nor do I," answered the man. "Let us regard the occasion as privileged."

"Why do you think I'm posing?" she demanded.

"Once upon a time," he began, ignoring her question, "there was a war on, up the road. A large number of people, to their great annoyance, got roped into the performance--amongst them a certain man, whom we will call Jones.... Good old British name, Jones. And Jones had taken unto himself a wife just before the war broke out."

Ralton was staring at some gulls which circled and screamed over the shingly beach.

"It seemed to Jones that nothing in the whole wide world could be quite as wonderful as the girl he had married. She was such a dear--such a pal; and sometimes he used to look ahead into the future, and just thank heaven for his marvellous luck. Then, as I said, came the war.... And Jones went.

"Naturally he had no hesitation--no more had she. It was the only conceivable thing that any man could do. He trained along with the rest of the New Army, and he went to France." Ralton smiled. "You will notice that Jones and Mrs. Jones were very, very ordinary beings--like, shall we say, you and I."

"Stories about ordinary beings are the only ones that really matter," said the girl. "What did Jones do in France?"

"What thousands of other Joneses have done," answered Ralton. "He wasn't particularly brave, and he wasn't particularly cowardly; he was just an ordinary man who carried on because he couldn't do anything else, and thought in his spare time quite a lot about--the one at home. You see--it was shortly going to be two: and that makes a man think--quite a deal, especially when he's away at a war.... Have you got any children?" he asked, abruptly.

The girl shook her head, and after a while he went on.

"It was just before a battle that he got the wire he had been expecting, and after he'd read it he sat staring at it dazedly. It just couldn't be; of course there was a mistake. There must be. He knew that sometimes women did die at such times; but ... but not his woman. It couldn't be his wife that was dead--the thing was preposterous. Such a thing couldn't happen, any more than the one man's name can ever appear in the casualty list. Other names perhaps--but not his."

He hit at a tuft of grass with the club in his hand. "At last it penetrated into his brain, and by that time the battle was over. He gathered that he had done rather well--been recommended for a decoration of sorts, and he laughed like hell at the folly of it all. He felt he only wanted one thing, and that was to go after his girl. He didn't care a rap about the son he'd never seen; he knew it was being well looked after, and he wouldn't even go on leave to see it. It was only the girl he thought about, and she--well, she was unattainable except by one method. So he deliberately set to work to secure that method."

Ralton's eyes were fixed on the girl now, and her cigarette had dropped unheeded on the grass.

"He ran the most unheard-of risks; he volunteered for any and every stunt that came along--but the Boche seemed to miss him on purpose. For weeks and months it continued--but it was no good: he bore a charmed life.