Maker of Opportunities — Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
From there on, the luck varied and at the Stockbridge farm the score stood McLemore, 21; Ventnor, 30. It seemed a difficult lead to overcome, for the Sphynx was playing straight with a mid-iron, while Steve, whose only hope lay in getting distance, had twice pulled into rough grass, which cost him lost balls and extra strokes.
The wonder was how he played at all, for Aurora had refused to marry him three times in the last twenty minutes.
The result was inevitable, and so like the man in the adage, after playing thirty-eight strokes, he "went up in the air," missing shot after shot and relinquishing all claim to consideration, playing on only because fate seemed to demand it of him.
At the Van Westervelt's fence both men got off "good ones," landing well in the middle of the pasture and had gone forward into the field, their caddies close behind them, when from the shelter of a clump of trees along the stream to their left, there emerged a shadow.
Aurora saw it first.
"It's a bull," she said.
"No, it's only a cow," ventured the Sphynx, whose tauric glasses were not adjusted to distances--or to bulls.
"I'm sure it's a bull," repeated Aurora.
Steve glanced at the beast over his shoulder, and then took a brassey from his bag.
"He won't bother us," he muttered.
But the animal was approaching majestically, pausing now and then to paw up the dirt with his front hoofs and throwing a cloud of dust over his back.
"It's your parasol, Patty," said Aurora.
"Or Jimmy's vest," put in Patricia.
"You'd better run for it, you and Aurora," said Ventnor.
"You can easily make the fence."
"And you?"
"I'm going to play this shot.
It's the prettiest lie I've had all day."
"Come, Aurora," said Patricia, taking up her bag.
"There's no time to lose.
He's really coming this way," and gathering up her golf bag and skirts, she ran.
The Sphynx, meanwhile, still holding his mid-iron in his hand, was undecided.
His ball was twenty yards further on, and his eyes shifted uneasily from the bull to an old apple-tree within a reaching distance.
The women by this time had reached a convenient stile and were perched upon it shouting.
"Run, Steve!"
they cried.
"He's coming!"
Ventnor, who was addressing his ball, glanced up for a moment and then swung.
It was the prettiest shot that he had made all day, for the ball started with a low trajectory and soared and soared, clearing the fence on the far side of the field, a carry of two hundred yards, and landed in the next meadow.
Then he turned, club in hand, and looked at the bull which now stood twenty paces away, eying them viciously.
It was too late to make a sprint for the fence, and like McLemore, Steve wistfully eyed the apple-tree.
But he brandished his brassey manfully and prepared to jump aside if the bull lowered his head and rushed him.
It was at this moment that Jimmy McLemore, white as a sheet, made up his mind to run.
Jimmy's red vest decided the matter, and scorning Ventnor, with a bellow which lent wings to Jimmy's feet, the brute lowered its thick head and charged, passing like a tornado under the limb to which McLemore had fled for safety.
Steve Ventnor forgot to be frightened and stood leaning on his club roaring with laughter, for the Sphynx's dignity had always been a fearful and wonderful thing to him.
He heard the voices of the women behind him, pleading with him to run, but in his heart Steve Ventnor made a mighty resolution that run he would not.
He had no dignity like Jimmy's to lose, but the spectacle Jimmy made decided him.
It took some strength of mind to moderate his pace as he picked up Patricia's red parasol and walked toward the fence.
The bull however, refused to be distracted, and stood pawing the ground beneath the apple-tree, bellowing up at the soles of the Sphynx's boots and making havoc of the beautiful Campbell mid-iron, which was the only thing of Jimmy's that he could touch.
The women on the stile were laughing, Patricia frankly, uncontrollably, Aurora nervously, looking at Steve as he came up with a queer little anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows.
"I haven't any patience with you," she said.
"You might have been gored to death."
Ventnor was still laughing.
"I never saw Jimmy run before," he said.
"We'll have to get him out of that somehow.
I think I'll have a try at it with Patricia's parasol."
But Patricia quickly snatched it from his hand.
Her little drama had worked out far more beautifully than she had ever hoped it would, and she didn't propose to have it ruined now.
"Nothing of the sort," she cried.
"You may do whatever you like with your own skin, but that is a perfectly good French parasol, and it's mine."
And she put it behind her back.
Meanwhile the Sphynx was pelting the brute below him with apples and shouting anathema, both of which rolled from the animal's impervious back, as he circled angrily around the tree, up which he showed every disposition to climb.
From tragic-comedy the scene had degenerated into broadest farce.
"It's like Sothern playing a part of Georgie Cohan's," commented Patricia, sweetly.
"Is he apt to be there all day?"
"It looks so," said Aurora, struggling between anxiety and laughter.
"We really ought to do something."
But Patricia had settled herself comfortably on the top rail of the fence.
Things were going very much to her liking.
"What?"
she asked.
"Tell somebody.
There's a wagon coming this way now."
"But how about the Cross-Country Cup?"
looking at her watch.
"There's only an hour and a half to finish in."
"But we can't leave him up there," said Steve, more seriously.
"That bull will be there until--until the cows come home."
"Jimmy is perfectly safe," said Patricia, "unless he goes to sleep and falls out; and he can't starve unless he throws all the apples at the bull."
"Patty, you're heartless," said Aurora, but she laughed when she said it.
The farmer who came along in the wagon took in the situation at a glance and laughing more loudly than any of them, consented at last to drive to the barnyard and tell the farmer.
"It won't do any good," he said, sagely.
"That bull won't go back until he follows the cows at milking time.
He might quit before that--I dunno.
I'll do what I can though."
And with a laconic chirrup to his nag, he departed in the direction of the Van Westervelts' farmyard.
The party of three followed him with their eyes until he had disappeared in a cloud of dust and then examined the apple-tree from which the Sphynx's legs dangled hopelessly.
The rest of him was hidden among the leaves.
"Until the cows come home," said Patricia, solemnly, and looking into one another's eyes all three of them burst into shameless laughter.
And with that laugh free-masonry was established.
It was plainly to be read in Aurora's eyes.
The toppling of Jimmy's dignity had been too much for her own sense of gravity.
Patricia meanwhile had taken out her watch.
"This, my dear children," she said, indicating with a fine gesture, the Sphynx's apple-tree, "is one of the hazards of the New Game of Golf.
There is only an hour and a half to finish in.
Play the game, you two, I must wait."
"It wouldn't be the sporting thing," said Steve, struggling with a desire to obey.
"I'd like to know who is as good a judge of the rules of a game as its inventor," said Patricia.
"Am I right, Aurora?"
Aurora by this time was fingering at the strap of Ventnor's golf bag.
"Yes," she decided, "as Patricia says, it's in the game."
Steve glanced at her quickly, joyfully, but her head was lowered and she was already down the steps of the stile and walking along the road toward the adjoining meadow.
Ventnor's eyes met Patricia's for the fraction of a second of wireless telegraphy, after which Steve plunged down the steps and followed his caddy.
The gabled roof of Augustus North's house was visible above the trees scarcely half a mile away, but the paper chase led to it by devious, sequestered ways, which Steve Ventnor and his caddy scrupulously followed.
Many times on the way they stopped in the shadow of the trees, and but a few minutes of time remained when Steve ran down his putt.
It had taken him just one hundred and three shots to do that last nine hundred yards in an hour and forty minutes.
His caddy counted them;
which only went to prove her a conscientious person, for under the circumstances book-keeping was a difficult matter.
Perched upon her stile, in smiling patience Patricia waited "until the cows came home," while Mortimer Crabb, who had been notified over the telephone of the disaster, drove up to see the final chapter in Jimmy McLemore's undoing.
For the farmer came and at some pains extracted him from his perilous post.
The Crabbs drove McLemore to his home in their motor and then ran over to the Norths to hear how the cross-country match had finished.
The happy couple met them at the steps.
"The ball is in the hole, Patty, dear," said Steve Ventnor.
"Do I win the Cup?"
"You do," said Patricia, looking at her watch, "by three hours and a half.
And it's a loving-cup, Steve, with cupids and things, I had it made especially for you and Aurora."
Aurora kissed Patricia with enthusiasm.
"How did you know, Patty, it was to be Steve?"
"Simplest thing imaginable!
Because Steve is the most adorable boy, always excepting Mort, that was ever born--and then you know, Aurora--you couldn't have married Jimmy!"
"That's true," said Aurora, thinking of Jimmy's legs in the apple-tree, "I really couldn't." Steve refused to return to the Crabbs' to dinner, so the Makers of Opportunities departed alone.
Mortimer drove slowly through the gathering dusk and Patricia sat silent.
"Are you happy, Patty?"
he asked, at last.
"No, of course not," said Patricia, pinching his ear, "you know I'm never happy with you, Mort."
"Aren't you getting a little tired of putting the world in order?"
"Oh, yes.
But young people are _so_ provoking.
They can never make up their own minds, and you know _somebody_ has to do it for them."
"Haven't you ever wondered how the world would get on without you?"
"No, but sometimes I've wondered how you would."
"I?
Ah!
I wouldn't get on at all.
And yet you know there's a responsibility in being married to a Dea ex Machina."
"What, please?"
"The machinery may run down."
"And then?"
"The goddess may end in the ditch."
"Mort!"
"Or get a blow-out--you came near it, Patty."
"I didn't, Mort--ever."
"How about----?"
He was going to say John Doe, but she put her fingers over his lips so that he only mumbled.
"No, Mort--I'm a prudent goddess--a chauffeuse extraordinary."
"I'm sure of that, but----" "But what?"
"No car can endure so long out of the garage."
"You're a silly old thing."
She sighed comfortably and leaned her head over on his shoulder.
In a moment she spoke again.
"I think you're quite right though, Mort."
"Aren't you tired of making opportunities for other people?"
She made a sound that he understood.
"I am, a little, you know, Patty," he added.
The motor purred gently as it glided out of a country road into the turnpike.
"What do you say if we begin making opportunities for each other?"
She started up with a laugh.
"I never thought of that," she said.
"When shall we start?"
"At once, Patty.
If you'll provide the opportunity," and he kissed her, "I'll be its thief."
But she captured him at once.
THE END.
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