NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Page 10

  ‘Floris, Floris, open the door! Quick, Floris!’

  There was a pause. The faint silver whispering was silent. Then from within came a still voice, cold and small and even like the beating of a metal gong. Three words only, each syllable distinct and clear:

  ‘Who calls Floris?’

  I cannot exactly express what I felt—my mind went whirling through a maze of lunatic ideas, borne on a flood of sudden shivering terror. Crouching back against the wall, I answered faintly, my eyes on the keyhole, through which beat the faint red light, in my ears the ringing, like faint bells, monotonous, yet dreadfully, coldly sweet, of the Voice that spoke beyond the closed door.

  ‘Floris! It’s I, Otway. Are you—all right?’

  The piteous lament of the little question trailed away into the waiting silence. Again the pause, and the Voice spoke. More distinctly came the words this time, though the timbre was the same: faintly foreign, unaltered in tone, like one silver note struck time and again, time and again, clear-cold and even like glass bells in wind.

  ‘Floris is well, friend of Floris. Go your way.’

  All this time there was surging round my dazed head that terrible, wonderful perfume, that haze of drug-laden smoke—oh, I know what you may say, what most people did in fact say, that all there was to know was that Floris had some woman in there and didn’t want to let me in! You can think so if you like, but I tell you, you never heard that Voice of terrible, beautiful monotony that was like the beating of faint far-off gongs, like glass bells with silver clappers; the same note, the same note always. . . . There was no thought in me of resistance to that Voice that spoke from within that enchanted room—only a dumb, complete obedience. Stumbling I mounted the steep stairs to my room, sobbing as I went, but not for Floris. I wept for myself, for sheer blind loneliness and longing for that I should never hear again that Voice of still and silver empery, nor know the dreams that had flashed and faded across the dark tarn of my memory.

  Small and mean and utterly lonely and pitiful I felt, climbing the dark stairs alone. . . . I forget what happened then, but I must have flung myself across the bed as I was, for I awoke shivering in the grey dawn, still fully dressed, dazed and miserable, to realise the landlady was weeping outside on the landing, and calling me to come. There is little more to tell. They had found Floris there in the early morning, prone before the little table where stood the Soldan’s Daughter, grave and queenly, on her ivory throne wreathed with violets. His two hands were firmly clasped upon the hilt of the long Chinese dagger that had drunk his lifeblood, and there was a smile on his still face, upturned to the cold chill light of dawn, above the rose of blood that had blossomed so terribly beneath the narrow blade. Strangest thing of all, as the coroner said, was the presence, laid lightly on his dead breast, of a curious Eastern flower, white and waxlike, with a scent both sweet and heavy, and as fresh as if but just cut. But it was not strange to me, that flower-scent, as I stood and looked down at my dead friend, and knew by the smile on his white face, by its peace and joy, that Floris had won at last to his heart’s desire, and was walking with the Soldan’s Daughter in stranger fields than we can ever know.

  May

  The Golfer’s Story

  The Fifteenth Green

  Another night at Saunderson’s; a chilly night in early May, cold enough for the fire that roared and flamed cheerfully on the wide hearth that had heard so many strange tales! Saunderson, with his broad red cheerful face and ready grin, had tonight more than ever the air of hiding some surprise that, given the right moment, he would spring upon us—his air of suppressed importance held mystery, his portentous nods and winks at various special cronies as he presided over the familiar Round Table, its shining mahogany laden with good things, meant a new and interesting Something in the offing—or I did not know Saunderson! The newcomer sitting on his right, however, did not look promising—not the sort of fellow, one would have said, to adventure into the strange regions of the Occult . . . a long lean brown man, shy and rather speechless, eloquent apparently on one thing only—Golf.

  He was a ‘plus’ man, so Saunderson said as he introduced him before dinner—later round the fire, as we sipped our fragrant coffee and liqueurs, our host brought up the subject again.

  ‘Well, Ponting, what about that golf-story of yours? We all sing for our supper here sooner or later! Feel inclined to tell us that amazing tale you told me . . . about the strangeness of a certain green you once played on?’

  Ponting, the stranger, flushed a little; glanced round the eager circle, and began to speak—at first hesitatingly, then with decision.

  ‘Well—I’ve never told it outside. One doesn’t want to be thought a raving maniac, y’know. . . . But I can see you fellows look on these things differently. And the other fellows may call me crazy . . . but they had to make a new green at last, whatever they may say! . . .’

  His voice died away as he brooded silently over the fire, obviously visualising in all its horror the thing that had shaken his pleasant ordinary personality so deeply. Clearing his throat he started, speaking now rapidly and well, to my secret surprise:

  ‘I won’t give the name of the golf-course. But it is one of the best-known smaller ones—South coast: facing the sea. Turf very rough and uneven, and heaps of seagrass and bent, coarse rubbly stuff—also rather hilly in places. This happened a good five or six years ago, and I haven’t played there since. Matter of fact, this rather put me off the place, as you might imagine. . . . At first the course was only a nine-hole affair, quite good, as far as it went, but the town nearby—call it Rentford—was a pretty place, the bathing and fishing and so on good, and it was rapidly growing, so the Golf Club sent out requests for subscriptions to extend the course to full size. Well, the money simply rolled in—the secretary got no end of fat cheques—and they set about buying the land.

  ‘There was only one thing to do, of course—extend the course one end so that it occupied the whole of a sort of spit of land that ran out into the sea—not cliffy, you understand, but sort of lumpish land, hilly enough to make quite decent golf, but as a whole pretty flat. . . . This must sound irrelevant, but it isn’t really. It hangs on to the story. . . .

  ‘The other end of the links ran into land that was getting too valuable, in the town’s rapid expansion, to give up to golf, and as one side of the links gave on to the seashore and the other was bounded by the railway, that meant this spit of land was the only possible place that could be utilised . . . do you see?

  ‘There was one tiny hovel upon it, that’s all: a fisher’s hut really—a sort of shack. It wasn’t common land, but belonged to a man, Sir Harry Lansing, who owned a good deal of land round about, and he didn’t bother about it—gipsies used to camp there sometimes, but even for them it wasn’t popular; running right out into the sea as it did it was shockingly bleak, and the winds must have fairly howled across it in the winter. I used to watch the grey seagrass bending as the wind swept it flat on a stormy day, and the sand twirling and dancing in tall spirals in the little hollows, and pity the poor devil that lived in the hut. . . . Yet he seemed to like it!

  ‘The Secretary of the Club—fellar called—er—Binner, I think—got in touch with the owner, Sir Harry Lansing, a fat port-wine drinking sort of chap, rather a swab to look at, but not at all a bad sort on the whole.

  ‘He asked a pretty high figure for the land, but as I say, Binner, the Sec., had plenty of funds in hand, and they soon arranged things . . . but then this old chap suddenly took a hand! “Iles”, I believe his name was—“Nicky Iles”—“Old Nick” the small boys used to call him; frightened to death of him they were—used to run like hares if they saw him coming, and I never knew a boy venture near his hut on the promontory. He came plodding up to the Club-house, by some curious coincidence . . . though now, ’pon my Sam, I’m hanged if I think it was really coincidence! . . . on the very day and moment when Binner and Lansing were settling the deal, and asked for Binner. He was such a frows
y-looking old ragamuffin that the steward hesitated—but he said afterwards, he simply had to go in to Binner, the old man’s eyes frightened him—and when Lansing heard he was there, he nodded.

  ‘“All right—let’s see him, Binner.” He lighted an opulent cigar, and pushed away the signed papers. “He’ll have to move, I suppose, eh?”

  ‘“Oh, yes!” said Binner importantly; “that shack of his is just where I think we shall have to put the fifteenth green—a good flat piece of ground on a slight hill, with a drop beyond that would make a fine natural bunker. Oh yes . . . we’ll compensate him, of course. . . .’

  ‘As he spoke the door opened and the shambling, dirty old figure entered.

  ‘He wore an ancient plaid, indescribably tattered and marked with silvery patches of fish-scales—he spent most of his time fishing in his crazy old boat in the tiny natural harbour at the foot of his shack. From under the battered brim of his sou’wester odd tags and ends of grey hair appeared, and his wild grey beard was unkempt and stringy as the fluttering remnants of wool one sees caught in the furzebushes from the fleece of wandering sheep. He wore great sea-boots, and the hands leaning on the crook of a twisted stick were long and sharp-nailed and brown as an aboriginal’s . . . but the man’s eyes were extraordinary! So light a blue that they were almost colourless, they peered through the shaggy fringing of matted eyebrows like pools seen through rushes . . . somehow they were not only arresting, those eyes, but disquieting . . . there was something vaguely unpleasant about them, something not quite human. . . .

  ‘There was a moment’s silence as the ragged old villain stared from one man to the other, then he spoke, and Binner jumped, for his voice was no guttural, aitch-less peasant’s voice, but the voice of a cultured man!

  ‘“Well! Have you settled it, you two gentlemen?” The sneer was unmistakable, and Lansing flushed an angry purple.

  ‘“Settled it?” Binner was bewildered. How could this old scarecrow know already what had but just been signed and sealed? As he stared, the old man shuffled over to the table, and picking up the deed in his claw-like hands, examined it attentively.

  ‘Laying it down, he favoured the two men with a scowl the malevolence of which Binner told me fairly turned him cold to the spine.

  ‘“Ah—I thought so! So to increase the space for your ridiculous game—as if there was not enough ground already for fools to play on—you propose to turn me out of house and home, eh?”

  ‘“Not at all, Iles, not at all!” With a curiously nervous sort of feeling, Binner spoke eagerly, propitiatingly—with an instinct that he could not overcome, he somehow felt it was terribly important that he should soothe the old man down . . . make him “harmless”. The sinister implication of this mental phrase was to come back to him afterwards with a faint shock.

  ‘“We shall have to ask you to move, I’m sorry to say, as we shall need every inch of ground on the promontory—but we shall make you ample compensation . . . and there are plenty of cottages along the shore that will be far more comfortable for you than that draughty hut. . . .”

  ‘He stopped, for the old man was not looking at him. For some reason all his rancour seemed to be concentrated on Sir Harry, complacently smoking his cigar, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘With one long discoloured nail “Old Nick” tapped the deed lying on the littered table . . . his words when he spoke were addressed not to Binner but to the other man, and his tone was heavy, venomous with hate.

  ‘“You—it is you who have sold this home of mine! It is you I have to thank then—to fill your fat pocket-book still fuller you have sold it all . . . the windy stretch of land that has been mine for these long years—the hollow where I keep my boat under the lee o’ the sandhills—the little garden where I grow my cabbages; the house, the little wooden house I built myself, with these hands, to shelter me. . . .”

  ‘Sir Harry shrugged his shoulders with a nonchalant air—though to tell the truth, the tone of the old man’s voice, those dreadful still eyes, cold and glassy as water, were stirring in him a horrible growing disquietude that bordered on fear itself . . . he spoke robustly, tying to appear indifferent.

  ‘“Rot—don’t get poetical about it, my good fellow! As far as cabbages go, you’re welcome to come up and ask my gardener for a couple whenever you need ’em, I’m sure; and as Mr Binner says, you’ll be far more comfortable in a new cottage. . . . As far as that goes, I’m sorry and so on—’ll overlook your extraordinary rudeness to me, having regard to your feelings and that . . . now you trot off to the pub and spend that to drink my health!”

  ‘Lightly, carelessly, he tossed a five-pound note over the table and started . . . for the old man took it, and spitting deliberately into the middle of it, set it upon the carpet and ground his heel upon it.

  ‘Binner, as he watched, was conscious of a pang of unpleasant fear . . . the action was not impulsively done, as in an irretrievable spasm of rage, but deliberately, maliciously, with a relishing completeness that to Binner’s nervous mind seemed somehow to bode most horribly ill to Sir Harry Lansing, lolling there serene in his ruddy health!

  ‘Retreating to the door, the old man spoke again as the two men watched him in silence, and the venom in his tone chilled Binner at least, like an icy draught playing down his spine.

  ‘“I see. It is well—I have nothing to say but this. I shall go . . . but when you play your first round, Sir Harry, I shall be there to see!”

  ‘The door closed behind him with a stealthy click, and they heard his booted feet shuffling swiftly away down the echoing white-painted passage—in the empty room both men looked at each other, and involuntarily shivered.

  ‘“Booh!” Lansing, shaking his fat shoulders, got up. “An unpleasant old boy—but I’m sure I don’t care if he follows me round the course calling down all the curses in the calendar upon me! They say here, y’know, that he’s got a familiar spirit in the sea, and they see it climbing up the path to his house, all dripping, on dark nights. . . .”

  ‘Binner was conscious of a fresh shivery feeling of “nastiness”—what had come over Lansing to talk this way? Hastily he changed the conversation.

  ‘“They’re all superstitious, the fishers here—nothing in it. Well, that’s done—don’t forget you play your first round with me, Lansing! I’ll hurry the work along at once as soon as the plans are passed by the committee.”

  ‘“Right you are. And we’ll send the old man a line to come and gibber at us!”

  ‘Fat Harry Lansing lurched out, and Binner, with a sigh of relief, turned again to his work.

  ‘Rentford was largely a summer place, and the bulk of the regular golfers for the most part arrived then, so only a comparatively few players were gallant enough to face the gale that swept across the links on the day of the ceremonial opening next May.

  ‘Sir Harry Lansing was yachting in the Solent . . . with a queer little feeling of relief Binner noted his non-appearance. His vague fears of Old Nick’s possible dramatic revenge had largely faded away. The old man had entirely disappeared after the interview of a year ago, and the fisher folk darkly murmured that he had “drownded hisself”, but Binner did not think that likely, since no body had been washed up by the tide. . . . More likely he had betaken himself further down the coast, in high dudgeon, refusing even to see the alteration in his beloved land. Yet it had seemed that a curious modicum of his savage anger and resistance to change hung about the promontory that had known him so long . . . for the making of the new nine holes, and above all the fifteenth green, which, as Binner had thought, was placed upon the little plateau where the hut had stood, had been attended by countless petty but delaying difficulties. Workmen had sprained their wrists and ankles, been stung by wasps, fallen into unsuspected ditches—one had been all but drowned, slipping into the sea when a tussock of grass suddenly gave way . . . experts designing the course had quarrelled among themselves, fallen mysteriously ill, left suddenly . . . but Binner, his fighting instinct aroused,
had kept doggedly on, despite a deep hidden feeling, deny it how he might, that there was something more than mere coincidence in these repeated setbacks. However, there it lay at last—the finished course; the greens, laboriously turfed with fresh green turves cut from far inland, gleaming like jade patches in the grey-brown sandy waste; the cheerful scarlet of the bright new tee-boxes, yellow and white flags fluttering in the tearing gale, and behind all the sombre watching sea, vast and somnolent and mysterious. . . . Binner rubbed his hands as he surveyed it from the sheltered verandah of the Club-house, and felt he had reason to congratulate himself on his achievement.

  ‘He watched the players as they gradually disappeared over the brow of the low hill that led from the old ninth tee on to the promontory, and wondered idly whether the old man might not be lurking somewhere about even now—to watch the first ball driven on to his beloved patch of ground! Then other considerations drove it from his mind, and he was sitting immersed in papers in his inner sanctum when the first of the returning golfers, Orton the solicitor, a friend of his, stumped into the room and threw himself exhausted into a chair.

  ‘“Give us a whisky-and-soda, old man—I’m done! We’ve been round—but I don’t want to do it again in a hurry unless I’m feeling stronger than I am today!”

  ‘He drained the brimming glass of golden liquid and slapped his chest; Binner looked at him, arrested—Jack Orton was the huskiest specimen of manhood in the club, and a scratch player—and for a mere seaside gale to weary him? . . .