She made a singularly impressive picture, standing there with her tweed-clad form outlined against the white of the clubhouse wall. She had the appearance of one who is about to play Boadicea in a pageant; and John Gooch, as he gazed at her, was conscious of a chill that ran right down his back and oozed out at the soles of his feet.
'How's the match coming along?' she yelled, cheerily.
'All square,' replied Sidney McMurdo, with a sullen scowl. 'Wait where you are for a minute, germs,' he said. 'I wish to have a word with Miss Flack.'
He drew Agnes aside and began to speak to her in a low rumbling voice. And presently it was made apparent to all within a radius of half a mile that he had been proposing to her once again, for suddenly she threw her head back and there went reverberating over the countryside that old familiar laugh.
'Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!' laughed Agnes Flack.
John Gooch shot a glance at his opponent. The artist, pale to the lips, was removing his coat and hat and handing them to his caddie. And, even as John Gooch looked, he unfastened his braces and tied them round his waist. It was plain that from now on Frederick Pilcher intended to run no risk of not overswinging.
John Gooch could appreciate his feelings. The thought of how that laugh would sound across the bacon and eggs on a rainy Monday morning turned the marrow in his spine to ice and curdled every red corpuscle in his veins. Gone was the exhilarating ferment which had caused him to skip like a young ram when a long putt had given him a forty-six for the first nine. How bitterly he regretted now those raking drives, those crisp flicks of the mashie-niblick of which he had been so proud ten minutes ago. If only he had not played such an infernally good game going out, he reflected, he might at this moment be eight or nine down and without a care in the world.
A shadow fell between him and the sun; and he turned to see Sidney McMurdo standing by his side, glaring with a singular intensity.
'Bah!' said Sidney McMurdo, having regarded him in silence for some moments.
He turned on his heel and made for the club-house.
'Where are you going, Sidney?' asked Agnes Flack.
'I am going home,' replied Sidney McMurdo, 'before I murder these two miserable harvest-bugs. I am only flesh and blood, and the temptation to grind them into powder and scatter them to the four winds will shortly become too strong. Good morning.'
Agnes emitted another laugh like a steam-riveter at work.
'Isn't he funny?' she said, addressing John Gooch, who had clutched at his scalp and was holding it down as the vibrations died away. 'Well, I suppose I shall have to referee the rest of the match myself. Whose honour? Yours? Then drive off and let's get at it.'
The demoralizing effects of his form on the first nine holes had not completely left John Gooch. He drove long and straight, and stepped back appalled. Only a similar blunder on the part of his opponent could undo the damage.
But Frederick Pilcher had his wits well about him. He overswung as he had never overswung before. His ball shot off into the the long grass on the right of the course, and he uttered a pleased cry.
'Lost ball, I fancy,' he said. 'Too bad!'
'I marked it,' said John Gooch, grimly. 'I will come and help you find it.'
'Don't trouble.'
'It is no trouble.'
'But it's your hole, anyway. It will take me three or four to get out of there.'
'It will take me four or five to get a yard from where I am.'
'Gooch,' said Frederick Pilcher, in a cautious whisper, 'you are a cad.'
'Pilcher,' said John Gooch, in tones equally hushed, 'you are a low bounder. And if I find you kicking that ball under a bush, there will be blood shed – and in large quantities.'
'Ha, ha!'
'Ha, ha to you!' said John Gooch.
The ball was lying in a leathery tuft, and, as Pilcher had predicted, it took three strokes to move it back to the fairway. By the time Frederick Pilcher had reached the spot where John Gooch's drive had finished, he had played seven.
But there was good stuff in John Gooch. It is often in times of great peril that the artistic temperament shows up best. Missing the ball altogether with his next three swings, he topped it with his fourth, topped it again with his fifth, and, playing the like, sent a low, skimming shot well over the green into the bunker beyond. Frederick Pilcher, aiming for the same bunker, sliced and landed on the green. The six strokes which it took John Gooch to get out of the sand decided the issue. Frederick Pilcher was one up at the tenth.
But John Gooch's advantage was short-lived. On the right, as you approach the eleventh green there is a deep chasm, spanned by a wooden bridge. Frederick Pilcher, playing twelve, just failed to put his ball into this, and it rolled on to within a few feet of the hole. It seemed to John Gooch that the day was his. An easy mashie-shot would take him well into the chasm, from which no eighteen-handicap player had ever emerged within the memory of man. This would put him two down – a winning lead. He swung jubilantly, and brought off a nicely-lofted shot which seemed to be making for the very centre of the pit.
And so, indeed, it was; and it was this fact that undid John Gooch's schemes. The ball, with all the rest of the chasm to choose from, capriciously decided to strike the one spot on the left-hand rail of the wooden bridge which would deflect it towards the flag. It bounded high in the air, fell on the green, and the next moment, while John Gooch stood watching with fallen jaw and starting eyes, it had trickled into the hole.
There was a throbbing silence. Then Agnes Flack spoke.
'Important, if true,' she said. 'All square again. I will say one thing for you two – you make this game very interesting.'
And once more she sent the birds shooting out of the treetops with that hearty laugh of hers. John Gooch, coming slowly to after the shattering impact of it, found that he was clutching Frederick Pilcher's arm. He flung it from him as if it had been a loathsome snake.
A grimmer struggle than that which took place over the next six holes has probably never been seen on any links. First one, then the other seemed to be about to lose the hole, but always a well-judged slice or a timely top enabled his opponent to rally. At the eighteenth tee the game was still square; and John Gooch, taking advantage of the fact that Agnes had stopped to tie her shoe-lace, endeavoured to appeal to his one-time friend's better nature.
'Frederick,' he said, 'this is not like you.'
'What isn't like me?'
'Playing this low-down game. It is not like the old Frederick Pilcher.'
'Well, what sort of a game do you think you are playing?'
'A little below my usual, it is true,' admitted John Gooch. 'But that is due to nervousness. You are deliberately trying to foozle, which is not only painting the lily but very dishonest. And I can't see what motive you have, either.'
'You can't, can't you?'
John Gooch laid a hand persuasively on the other's shoulder.
'Agnes Flack is a most delightful girl.'
'Who is?'
'Agnes Flack.'
'A delightful girl?'
'Most delightful.'
'Agnes Flack is a delightful girl?'
'Yes.'
'Oh?'
'She would make you very happy.'
'Who would?'
'Agnes Flack.'
'Make me happy?'
'Very happy.'
'Agnes Flack would make me happy?'
'Yes.'
'Oh?'
John Gooch was conscious of a slight discouragement. He did not seem to be making headway.
'Well, then, look here,' he said, 'what we had better do is to have a gentleman's agreement.'
'Who are the gentlemen?'
'You and I.'
'Oh?'
John Gooch did not like the other's manner, nor did he like the tone of voice in which he had spoken. But then there were so many things about Frederick Pilcher that he did not like that it seemed useless to try to do anything about it. Moreover, Agnes Flack had finished tying her shoe-lace, and was making for them across the turf like a mastodon striding over some prehistoric plain. It was no time for wasting words.
'A gentleman's agreement to halve the match,' he said hurriedly.
'What's the good of that? She would only make us play extra holes.'
'We would halve those, too.'
'Then we should have to play it off another day.'
'But before that we could leave the neighbourhood.'
'Sidney McMurdo would follow us to the ends of the earth.'
'Ah, but suppose we didn't go there? Suppose we simply lay low in the city and grew beards?'
'There's something in it,' said Frederick Pilcher, reflectively.
'You agree?'
'Very well.'
'Splendid!'
'What's splendid?' asked Agnes Flack, thudding up.
'Oh – er – the match,' said John Gooch. 'I was saying to Pilcher that this was a splendid match.'
Agnes Flack sniffed. She seemed quieter than she had been at the outset, as though something were on her mind.
'I'm glad you think so,' she said. 'Do you two always play like this?'
'Oh, yes. Yes. This is about our usual form.'
'H'm! Well, push on.'
It was with a light heart that John Gooch addressed his ball for the last drive of the match. A great weight had been lifted from his mind, and he told himself that now there was no objection to bringing off a real sweet one. He swung lustily; and the ball, struck on its extreme left side, shot off at right angles, hit the ladies' tee-box, and, whizzing back at a high rate of speed, would have mown Agnes Flack's ankles from under her, had she not at the psychological moment skipped in a manner extraordinarily reminiscent of the high hills mentioned in Sacred Writ.
'Sorry, old man,' said John Gooch, hastily, flushing as he encountered Frederick Pilcher's cold look of suspicion. 'Frightfully sorry, Frederick, old man. Absolutely unintentional.'
'What are you apologizing to
him
for?' demanded Agnes Flack with a good deal of heat. It had been a near thing, and the girl was ruffled.
Frederick Pilcher's suspicions had plainly not been allayed by John Gooch's words. He drove a cautious thirty yards, and waited with the air of one suspending judgement for his opponent to play his second. It was with a feeling of relief that John Gooch, smiting vigorously with his brassie, was enabled to establish his
bona fides
with a shot that rolled to within mashie-niblick distance of the green.
Frederick Pilcher seemed satisfied that all was well. He played his second to the edge of the green. John Gooch ran his third up into the neighbourhood of the pin.