Part 45 (1/2)

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 detour, and walk home along the sh.o.r.e.

A friendly gap between two hillocks presented itself on her left, and she swung round and made for it. As she pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude.

”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, s.h.i.+fting, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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, a.s.signing to herself the superior and congenial role 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 gra.s.s, 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,--