CHAPTER XII
"... TAMEN USQUE RECURRET"
Elsie walked on. Her face was set, and her blue-grey eyes had a steely look. In her hand she carried a golf-ball—not the one which poor Pip had "discovered" in the hole, but another, her own, the genuine article. She had spied it, lying in an absolutely unplayable position under a stone, almost immediately after Pip had left her to her handkerchief. She had picked it up, and was on her way back to the green to inform her opponent that the match was his, when she was startled by a mighty shout, and arrived in time to witness the whole of Pip's elaborate conjuring-trick. She grasped the situation at once, and all the woman in her blazed up at this monstrous piece of impertinence. Her anger caused her to overlook the fact that Pip, in his desire to save her from mortification, had deliberately sacrificed his chances and thrown away the spoils of victory. For the moment, all she realised was that he had "patronised" her, treated her like a spoiled child, and allowed her to win. Her blood boiled at the idea. She walked on quickly.
It was not until she had proceeded for a couple of hundred yards that she discovered that she was going in the wrong direction. The ninth hole was situated at the extreme end of the links, and as she had turned on her heel and swung off more with the idea of abandoning her present locality than of reaching another, she realised that, if she continued on her present course, every step would take her farther from the hotel. The discovery added to her wrath. She was making herself ridiculous now. Pip had probably noticed her mistake, and was in all likelihood still standing on the green laughing at her. Return and walk past him she would not. Only one thing remained to be done: she would turn in among the neighbouring sand-hills, make a détour, and walk home along the shore.
A friendly gap between two hillocks presented itself on her left, and she swung round and made for it. As she passed through the entrance she could not help looking back. Pip was sitting on the tee-box beside the now distant green. His chin was buried in his hands, and he was gazing out to sea, with his pipe projecting from his mouth at a reflective angle.
Elsie knew that attitude.
"He's thinking the situation over," she said to herself. "Let him: it will do him good. Oh, dear! where have I got to now?"
She walked into a tiny amphitheatre. All round her rose walls of fine, shifting, running sand. They sloped up gradually, to where they had fallen away from the surrounding summit, leaving a crumbling precipice six or seven feet high, crowned with a projecting rim of treacherous turf,—a natural bunker if ever there was one, and almost as difficult of exit for a girl as for a golf-ball.
But Elsie made the attempt. She was determined not to go back through the gap into Pip's range of vision if she could help it. She struggled up the slope of yielding sand, which sank beneath her feet and trickled into her shoes: she reached the top, laid hold of the overhanging turf, and tried to pull herself up. But, just as she placed a triumphant knee on the summit, the crumbling fabric subsided beneath her weight, and she was projected in a highly indecorous fashion to the foot of the slope.
On this occasion Elsie had some cause to feel grateful that Pip (or indeed any other gentleman) was not present. But the idea did not occur to her. In fact, things had come to a crisis. She was tired out after her hard game, disappointed at the result,—as a matter of fact, she was not very clear as to whether she had won or lost,—and thoroughly demoralised and unstrung by the strain of recent events. She had planned out the present comedy with some care, assigning to herself the superior and congenial rôle of magnanimous conqueror, and to Pip that of humbled and grateful victim. Somehow everything had gone wrong. She was angry with herself and furious with Pip, and now she had fallen down several yards of slippery sand and twisted her foot. She was not sure if the comedy had turned out a tragedy or a farce; all she realised was that it had been a dismal failure. In short, Elsie had expelled Nature with a pitchfork, and now Nature was coming home to roost.
But, in spite of the pitchfork, Nature bore no malice. On the contrary, quite aghast at the havoc that her brief absence had created, she at once took her luckless daughter in hand. Consequently Elsie, poor, distracted, overwrought Elsie, threw herself down on the scanty grass, and found immediate relief in woman's priceless and ever-to-be-envied panacea for all ills—a good cry.
How long she lay sobbing she did not know. When she at length raised her head from the turf and began to dab her eyes with a damp and entirely inadequate pocket-handkerchief, she became aware, with a curious lack of surprise, that Pip was sitting a few yards from her. His pipe was no longer in his mouth, and he was regarding her intently with serious eyes.
"You left your clubs behind you," he said. "I brought them along."
"Thank you," said Elsie.
There was a pause. Finally Elsie completed operations with the handkerchief, and looked Pip squarely in the face. Her tears seemed in some mysterious way to have washed all feelings of anger, restraint, and false sentiment out of her head. For all that, she was not absolutely comfortable. Pip must, of course, be punished for having put that ball into the hole; but the performance of this duty demanded firmness and judicial dignity, and she felt guiltily conscious that her recent tears would detract somewhat from its effectiveness.
Pip, however, was the first to break the silence.
"I was wondering," he remarked, "why you raced off like that just now. Of course, there was one explanation,—that you wanted to lose the match, and were sick at having won it,—but I wasn't such a bounder as to think that. I smoked a pipe or two up there,"—Elsie started; she had not realised that her cry had lasted so long,—"and I thought it all over to see if I could come to a satisfactory solution of the mystery, and—"
Elsie unclosed her left hand, and displayed a golf-ball, which she tossed towards him.
"There's the solution, Pip," she said.
Pip picked up the ball and examined it. Then he took another from his pocket and compared the two.
"Ah!" he remarked. "Then you spotted me. I thought you had, but I couldn't see how. It never occurred to me that you had found your ball. I thought perhaps you had seen something wrong with the one I put—took out of the hole, but I see they are both identical. There's not a mark on either. It was a pity you found yours. If you hadn't, all would have ended happily, wouldn't it?"
"For me or for you?"
"For both of us."
"Then you wouldn't have minded losing?" This with a scornful little laugh.
"No, not in this case."
There was another silence. That Pip should not mind losing a match of which she was the prize struck Elsie as uncomplimentary, not to say rude.
But Pip was never rude to her. Obviously there was something more to come. She waited patiently. Pip gave no sign.
Presently feminine curiosity overcame pride, and she asked,—
"What do you mean by 'in this case'?"
"I mean this," said Pip. "I don't like losing matches at any time,—nobody does,—but in this case, your case, I was glad."
"Oh! Why?"
"At first it was because I couldn't bear to see you beaten after the plucky fight you made. I've often felt the same thing at cricket, when some chap is sticking in to keep the last wicket up, and I am put on to knock it down. Admiration for a gallant foe, and all that, you know. But now I am glad for quite another reason—jolly glad!" He gave the girl a look that was quite new to her.
"Why are you glad, Pip?" she asked, not unkindly.
"Well, I had a good long think just now, up on that green, and a lot of things were made plain to me that had never struck me before. First of all, I realised that you had been quite right."
"Right? About what?"
"About this golf-match being contrary to Nature. Love affairs aren't built that way. I had no right to try and force such terms on you. I see that now. I tried to drive you into a corner. It was a low-down trick, though I thought it a fair enough offer at the time. I was quite sincere."
"I know you were," said Elsie quickly.
Pip raised his eyes to hers for a moment.
"Thank you," he said; "it was decent of you to say that. Now, where I made my error was in this. I didn't think it mattered much whether I got you willing or unwilling, so long as I got you. It was you I wanted, you—Elsie—alive or dead, so to speak,—nothing else mattered. And then suddenly I saw what a fool I had been. I had forgotten that there were two sides to the question. When a man wins a race or a competition of any kind, he sticks the prize up on his mantelpiece and takes no further notice of it beyond looking at it occasionally and feeling glad he's got it. Once there, it ceases to have such an interest for him: he hasn't got to live with it or cart it about with him. I am afraid I was looking at you rather in that light. I was so taken up with the idea of winning you that I forgot about—about—"
"About having to 'cart me about with you'?" said Elsie.
"Yes, that's it. I forgot I couldn't put you on the mantelpiece and leave you there: I had to consider your point of view as well as my own. It was then I realised, all in a moment, that unless you came to me absolutely of your own free will, without terms or conditions, you couldn't come at all,—and what's more, I wouldn't want you to; and that's saying a good deal, as you know."
He paused suddenly, and darted a rather ashamed look at Elsie.
"I suppose all this seems fearfully obvious to you," he said. "Most men would have found it out for themselves from the beginning."
"Some men never find it out at all, Pip."
"Well, that's comforting. Anyhow, having reasoned it all out up there, I put my pipe in my pocket and came along here to tell you."
"To tell me what?"
"How sorry I was."
"What for?"
"For having behaved like a—"
"You don't look very sorry."
Pip's eyes gleamed.
"No, and I'm not either," he shouted. "I'm not, I'm not! I have seen something since then that has driven all my sorriness out of my head. I came along here, fearfully glum, just to say I was sorry to have forced such a caddish scheme on you, and to ask if I might carry your clubs back to the house, and suddenly I came round the corner, and there I saw you—crying."
"And that's made you glad?" said Elsie coldly.
"Glad? I should think it did!" He stood up, and continued, "Don't you see, dear, it showed me that you cared? A girl doesn't lie sobbing on the sand if she's absolutely indifferent. Oh, I know now, right enough: half an hour ago I didn't. I came upon you then hunting for your ball and dabbing your eyes with your handkerchief; but that of course was different; I knew it wasn't the real thing. You were just tired then, and sick at losing the game; but this time"—his face glowed—"this time I knew it was the real thing, and that you cared, you really cared. Yes, you cared; you had cared all the time, and I had never known it!"
He stood over her, absolutely radiant: no one had ever seen Pip like this before. Then he dropped down on to the grass beside the girl, and put his arm inside hers.
"You do care, don't you, Elsie?" he said.
Elsie turned and looked him full in the face, without a trace of affectation or fear.
"Yes, Pip, I do," she answered.
It was long after six when they emerged from their retreat. The clouds were drifting up once more from the southwest, and everything promised a wet night. There was little wind, but already rain-drops were beginning to fall, unsteadily and fitfully. Presently this period of indecision ceased, and the rain came down in earnest. The two paused, and Pip surveyed Elsie's thin blouse disapprovingly.
"Isn't there some place where we can shelter?" said Elsie.
"There's a sort of tin place over there, but you would be soaked through before you got halfway to it. Besides, this rain means business; it'll go on all night now."
"Come along then," said Elsie; "we must hurry. I can change when we get home."
"Wait a minute," said Pip.
He began to divest himself of his tweed jacket.
"Put this on," he said.
"Nonsense, Pip; you'll get soaked."
Pip sighed, gently and patiently.
"Put it on," he repeated, holding it open for her.
Elsie glanced at him, and obeyed.
"You're an obstinate old pig, sometimes, Pip," she remarked.
And so they tramped home. They said little: there seemed to be nothing left in the world worth saying. Pip carried both sets of clubs under his left arm. Occasionally he sighed, long and gently, as one who has done his day's work and is at peace with all the world. Elsie marched beside him, with her arms buried to the elbows in the deep pockets of Pip's old jacket. (They were spacious pockets: one of them was sheltering two hands.) At intervals Elsie would look up at Pip, upon whose head and shoulders the rain was descending pitilessly. Once she said,—
"Pip, you're getting awfully wet."
Pip looked down upon her for a moment. Then he looked up again, and shook his glistening head defiantly at the weeping heavens.
"Who cares?" he roared.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A.