"That was a lucky stroke of mine," he said, as he saw them exchange significant glances. "Ah! if I could only do it always!"
For the first time Sprague felt a suggestion of competition in the game. Although he was seven holes up on the stranger, and they had only eleven more to play, the possibility of losing flashed into his mind. Besides, he felt some little resentment, because of the superior way in which the foreigner spoke. He seized an iron club, and placed his ball within two yards of the hole.
"Why, that is magnificent," remarked Ricordo. "That is where skill comes in."
Purvis came next, and while he sent his ball on the green, it was at an extreme corner.
"If I lose this hole, my chance of winning on you shrinks to a vanishing point," remarked Ricordo. "Well, I must not lose it."
He looked at the ball steadily, and then turned to his companions.
"Is it not whimsical?" he said. "This little thing seems to have become a part of our life, eh? And the game of golf is also a game of life, non e vero? Forgive me, signores, but I am an Eastern, and everything in life is a parable to such as I."
He struck the ball, and laid it, according to golfers' parlance, "dead."
"Fine shot," said Purvis; as for Sprague, he said nothing.
For the first time Purvis lost a hole to Ricordo, but Sprague halved it with him.
"Good hole," remarked Purvis. "One under bogey."
"Ah yes," said Ricordo, "but I cannot afford even to halve with Mr. Sprague if I am to win the match, eh? Seven up and ten to play. No, I must win, and not halve. I have lost so much in the beginning of the game. The game of life is always hard to win, when you lose in the beginning."
Sprague took the honour, and drove with unerring precision. As he saw it fall, a look of satisfaction came into his eyes.
"Longest ball you've driven to-day, Sprague," said Purvis. "It's possible to reach the green with a good 'brassy' from there."
"Nasty hazard just before the green, by the look of it," remarked Sprague, looking steadily.
"Ther' iz, zur," said one of the caddies, "great big pit overgrawed weth vuss and vearny stuff."
Ricordo addressed his ball. It was teed rather too high, and he patted it down. A moment later he made his shot. There was a slight curve on it, but he outdrove Sprague by two or three yards. Purvis foozled his drive for the first time.
"Are you going to try it?" asked Purvis, as Sprague stood before his ball.
"It's risky," said the other. "Do your players here carry that green in two?" he asked the caddy who pulled out an iron for him.
"'T 'ave bin dun, zur," replied the caddy. "The perfeshernal 'ave done et, an' a gen'leman from London; but moasly they doan't. Bezides, ther's a little wind."
"I'll try it," said Sprague, taking the brassy.
He struck the ball fairly, but it did not carry. It fell into the bushes.
Sprague suppressed an angry exclamation.
"Goin' to play for safety, zur?" asked the caddy of Ricordo.
Ricordo took the brassy from the boy, and looked steadily towards the green.
"Risky," remarked Purvis, almost involuntarily. He knew that according to strict rules he had no right to say anything.
"The essence of life is risk," remarked Ricordo. Somehow both felt that he was a different man from what he had been an hour before. He no longer seemed to be playing a game upon which nothing depended, but to be struggling for a great victory in life. His eyes were no longer half closed, and the old expression of cynical indifference was gone. A few seconds later his ball fell within six yards of the pin.
Neither of the players uttered a sound; but the boys could not suppress their admiration.
"You are six up at the turn, signore," remarked Ricordo to Sprague. "That is odds against one; but noi verremo."
Sprague walked silently to the next tee. It was the first hole he had lost to the foreigner, and although his position seemed well-nigh impregnable, he had a fear of losing. He felt as though he were not playing with a man, but with fate.
Ricordo took the honour. The green was over two hundred yards away, but he landed his ball safely on it. Sprague drove next; he failed to reach it by more than thirty yards. Purvis fared no better. Again Ricordo won the hole.
"Five up, and eight to play," he laughed pleasantly. "I cannot afford to make any mistakes, signore."
Ding, dong, went the balls. When they had played the seventeenth hole, Ricordo had actually placed himself one up on Purvis, and was all square with Sprague. The game was to be finished on the last green.
"Ah, I like that," said Ricordo lightly. "Life is never interesting when everything is settled early in the game, eh, Mr. Sprague? And everything is worth so much more when we win by a single bold stroke, eh?"
Why it was, Sprague could not tell, but his heart beat faster than was its wont. An atmosphere of grim earnestness possessed him, and more, a fear filled his heart. After having the game in his hands he was in danger of losing it. Not that he had played badly. In nearly every case he had been level with bogey, but then in nearly every case for the last nine holes the stranger had beaten him by a stroke. Yes, he was angry. The man had commenced as a beginner, he had thrown away his chances, and yet he had recovered all the ground he had lost. More than once he caught himself watching Ricordo's dark features. The fez which surmounted his face made him look sinister. The black beard and moustache covered his mouth, but he fancied a mocking smile playing around his lips. The man impressed him as a mystery. Sometimes he found himself thinking of him as an Englishman, but again strange fancies flitted through his mind concerning him. He pictured him away in desert places, dreaming of dark things.
"Anyhow, I can't win," said Purvis. "The best I can do is to halve the match with you, Mr. Ricordo."
"But I have a chance of winning," said Sprague. "By the way, signore, we've had nothing on the game. What do you say to a stake on this hole?"
"No, Mr. Sprague, I never play for stakes, except the stake of life."
"What do you mean?"
"A game is always more than a game to me. It has destiny in it. Thus we are playing for stakes, great stakes."
"What are they?"
"Ah, who can tell? Perhaps for heaven, perhaps for hell."
"Oh, I say!"
They were now standing on the eighteenth tee, and the green was near the club-house. Close to the flag they saw a woman and a man.
"Do you know who that is on the green?" Ricordo asked of the caddy who had made his tee and was moving away.
"Yes, zur; 'tes Miss Castlemaine, wot the links do belong to, and Muster Briarfield." The lad rushed away towards the green.
"Ah!" said Ricordo, "we may be playing for the lady – who knows?"
He looked at Sprague as he spoke, and noted the pallor of his face.
"Do you know Miss Castlemaine?" asked Purvis.
"I expected to see her when I came here," said the stranger; "but, as I said to Mr. Briarfield last night, although I have been here several days, I have not yet had the felicity of setting eyes on her. But fortune favours me now. Ah, we are playing for a great stake, Mr. Sprague. Who knows?"
"Perhaps the man who is standing by her side will win her," laughed Purvis. He hardly knew why he spoke.
"The man who is standing by may see most of the game," said Ricordo, "but he never wins – never. It is only the man who plays who wins. Ah, gentlemen, discussing the stakes on a tee is bad preparation for a stroke; therefore we will dismiss the subject. Besides, I never make wagers. Life itself is the wager."
He struck his ball, and although it flew far, it had what golfers call a "slice" on it. It cleared the hazard, but curled away to the right of the large green, at least twenty yards from the hole. He made no remark, but moved aside for Sprague to play.
"You've got your chance, Sprague," said Purvis in low tones. "A good straight shot, and you are close to the tee; it can't be more than a hundred and eighty yards."
Sprague felt his hands tremble. He had not missed a drive for the round; he determined he would not miss now. The stranger had made him feel that the game was a game of life. He knew not why, but it seemed to him that the future would depend on whether he won or lost.
His ball flew through the air. It was struck, and clean and true; it fell within ten yards of the hole.
"Good!" said Purvis, "a good putt, and you are down in two." Somehow, he had lost interest in the game himself: all interest was centred in the other two. Even when his ball failed to reach the green he did not mind; he did not care if he lost.
When they reached the green, they found that Sprague's ball had stymied Ricordo's – that is to say, it lay on the green on a straight line between Ricordo's ball and the hole.
"Will you either play out, or pick up your ball, signore?" said Ricordo quietly. "I believe it is the law that there are no stymies in a three-ball match."
He said this because Sprague stood waiting for him to play.
"If it is a stymie, certainly," he said, almost angrily.
"Look for yourself," said the stranger.
Sprague looked. "Very well, I'll play it out," he said.
He cast a hasty glance around, and saw that Olive Castlemaine and Herbert Briarfield had moved to the edge of the green and were watching the contest.
Sprague measured the distance carefully, then seizing the putter he played. The ball rolled to the lip of the hole, and stopped. His heart almost ceased to beat. Then perhaps a blade of grass bent or a breath of wind stirred – anyhow, the ball dropped into the hole.
Ricordo laughed pleasantly. "Ah, we halve it, I see," he said.
"It will take you all your time to do that," said Sprague triumphantly.
His words had scarcely escaped his lips when Signor Ricordo's ball came rolling across the green.
"Too lively," thought Purvis; but he was mistaken. It came straight to the hole and dropped in.
They heard some one clapping on the edge of the green; it was Herbert Briarfield, who had been watching.
"We will play it out another day," said Sprague.
Signor Ricordo walked away towards the spot where Herbert Briarfield and Olive Castlemaine stood. His eyes had half closed again, while the old air of cynical melancholy manifested itself in his face.
CHAPTER XXII
SIGNOR RICORDO AND OLIVE
"That was a fine putt of yours, signore; did you win the match?" said Herbert Briarfield, as he came up.
"No, it was only halved. The game has to be played out yet."
"Signore, let me introduce you to Miss Castlemaine, to whose goodness we owe these links."
Olive looked at him eagerly. She half held out her hand, but the stranger did not offer to take it. He bowed low, placing his right hand on his fez; but he did not lift it.
"I am greatly honoured," he said, in low tones, and Briarfield thought he detected an accent which he had not noticed before.
"You are enjoying your visit here, signore, I hope," said Olive, looking towards him curiously.
"It is becoming more interesting each day," was his reply.
"I am very glad," said Olive. "Perhaps you felt the place rather strange at first, and now, as you find congenial acquaintances, you feel, as we English say, 'more at home.'"
"Yes, I am making acquaintances. This morning, for example, I have enlarged the circle, and I found Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis very interesting."
"Whom did you say?" asked Olive quickly.
"Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis," said Ricordo, emphasising their names just as a foreigner might do. "Ah, you know them? I think they are coming this way."
"I must get back, Mr. Briarfield," said Olive quickly. "Father is expecting me to lunch."
"I will walk back with you," said Briarfield.
"And I, too, if I may," said Ricordo.
"You are not playing this afternoon?" said Briarfield.
"No, I think I am lazy, or perhaps I am getting old. We Easterns, you know, love to sit in the sun rather than exercise in it. Not that I feel tired. The air here gives one vigour. Ah, Miss Castlemaine, you were a benefactress to the tired part of the people of your country when you built your homestead."
"Only to a small degree, I am afraid," replied Olive. "It is only the few who can take advantage of it."
"Ah, but if all, situated as you are, would do likewise – " remarked Ricordo. "But there, I must not complain, I am one of the few. Besides, I have more than my deserts. I have not been regarded as an alien. Ah, you must be very trustful to take a stranger in without asking questions."
"Miss Castlemaine is no respecter of nationalities," interposed Herbert Briarfield.
"Ah, no, to be poor, to be tired – that is enough. But Mr. Sprague and Mr. Purvis, whom I played the golf with, they did not look either poor or tired. But perhaps they know you – they spoke as though they did."
Olive did not reply, neither did she meet the eyes of Ricordo, which were lifted to her face. She wondered whether they had told this man anything of the past.
"And you like Vale Linden?" she asked presently, in order to break the silence.
"It is the Garden of Eden," replied Ricordo; "yes, the Garden of Eden before the serpent brought trouble."
She wanted to speak in reply; but nothing came to her to say. She felt that Herbert Briarfield was right. The man suggested mystery; she was not sure that he had favourably impressed her, and yet there was a kind of fascination in his presence.
"You know England?" she said presently; "you speak our language so well, you must have spent a good deal of time in the country."
"Can any man know a country?" asked Ricordo. "The geography, that is not difficult. An hour with a map, and even London can be known. But the fields, the hills, the roads, the towns, they do not make a country. The people of England, then? Ah, I am profoundly ignorant of the people."
"And yet we are not a difficult people to understand," remarked Olive.
"No, you think not? I do not know, I have never tried to know."
"No?"
"I am content to look on the surface."
"Is not that a strange attitude of mind for an Eastern?"
"I am afraid I do not follow you."
"Well, I have always been led to believe that people from the East are very philosophical and great seekers after truth."
"Ah, but years teach wisdom, signorina, and that wisdom says, 'Never seek the truth.'"
"Why?"
"Because truth is never worth the knowing."
He spoke quite naturally, and did not seem to be aware that he was making a cynical statement. Neither did he lift his eyes to her. He walked slowly, keeping his eyes on the ground.
Olive felt a strange fascination in his presence; moreover, she could not feel that she was speaking to a stranger. She had a feeling that she had seen him before, heard him speak before. And yet everything about him was strange. His voice was not familiar to her, and it had a peculiar fluid tone which sounded un-English, and yet she fancied that she had heard it somewhere. As she listened, she found herself recalling the past, and thinking of the days before the dark shadow fell upon her life. Without knowing why, she found herself thinking of Leicester. The stranger's cynicism reminded her of the night when she first met him. She remembered how Leicester had dominated the gathering at her father's house, and that she had found herself admiring him, even while she had disagreed with everything he had said. The same thing was happening now. Herbert Briarfield, of whom she had thought a great deal during the last few days, seemed to have sunk in the background. He was one who did not matter, while the man who was a stranger had blotted him out. Perhaps this was because she found herself putting a double meaning on everything he said. Of course this might be because, owing to his Eastern associations, he would regard things differently from the way an Englishman would regard them; but she had spoken to men from the Orient before, and they had not impressed her in the same way. Still, she felt a kind of pleasure in matching her wits with his, even although she felt she might not come off best in the encounter.
"But would not your attitude of mind be fatal if it were universal, signore?" she asked.
"Pardon me, I think it is universal."
"You mean that we are not anxious to find the truth?"
"Exactly. Mind you, I do not say that you English people who boast of your honesty do not in theory hold that truth is the great thing to be sought after; but in action, in life, no. Let a man be true to truth and he is put down as a madman, a fool."
"Would you mind giving an example?"
"A dozen if you like. Here is one. It is a commonly accepted theory that well-being, happiness, depends not on what we possess, but on what we are. That 'to be' is more than 'to have.' How many are true to their creed? One in a million? Where one spends his energies in enriching his life, a million spend theirs on seeking to obtain what by common consent is evanescent. If half the energy were spent on beautifying character that is spent on 'getting on' in the ordinary acceptance of the term, what Christians call the millennium would come."
"Are you not assuming a great deal, signore?"
"But what, signorina?"
"That you understand the motives of the human heart?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"One judges by what one sees," he said. "And it is best to content oneself with that. The man who looks beneath the surface goes mad."
"And yet you are not mad?" and she laughed gaily.
"I am not sure," he said, and there was a quiet intensity in his tones – "no, I am not sure. Sometimes I think I am. But what then, signorina? We have our little lives to live, our little part to play on the world's stage."
Again she was reminded of Leicester, and as she thought of him a kind of shiver passed through her. This was Leicester over again; but another Leicester – a Leicester with a difference.
"But why play it, if it is so bad?"
"Ah, signorina, do you not think I have asked that question a thousand times? But then I have lived in the East. What can a man do against fate? The Arabians have got hold of a great truth: Kismet. Is not all philosophy centred in that?"
"No," she said, "I do not think so. If that is true, then every bad deed done would be the expression of God's will. Every murder, outrage, and abomination has His sanction, His benediction."
"Signorina has never lived in the East?"
"I do not see that that matters."
Signor Ricordo laughed quietly.
"It is refreshing to hear you," he said. "I can see into your mind now. You are thinking that the fatalistic doctrine destroys all virtue, all responsibility."
"Exactly."
"And yet are we responsible? Is not every action of life determined for us by circumstances, disposition, heredity, all forces over which we have no control?"
"And after you admit all that, every faculty of your being tells you you are responsible. After you have conceded every fatalist argument, you know that it is wrong. And more, you know that when you do wrong you are haunted by remorse, because you feel that you could have done right."
"Right! wrong!" said Ricordo, and he laughed in his soft, insinuating way.
"You do not believe in them?"
"Ah, signorina, let us cease to argue. Your faith is a tree which has borne such beautiful flowers and such wondrous fruits that you baffle logic. But then, signorina, you have never lived in hell."
Both Herbert Briarfield and Olive cast quick glances at him, but he did not alter his position; he walked quietly on, his eyes fixed on the ground.
"I say, Signor Ricordo," said Briarfield in an expostulating tone.
"That's why I am afraid of the truth," went on Ricordo, without seeming to notice Briarfield. "When a man has lived in hell for years, it upsets preconceived notions, it scatters logic to the winds, it makes conventional morality appear to be – what it is."
Olive Castlemaine felt that the man had thrown a kind of spell upon her. She did not realise that, to say the least, their conversation was not what was natural between people who had met for the first time. Had any one told her the previous day that on meeting a stranger of whom she knew nothing she would enter into a discussion with him on such topics, she would have laughed at it as impossible, yet she felt nothing of the incongruity of the situation. Somehow Ricordo seemed like a voice out of the past, and for a time she forgot things present.
"You have lived – that is – "
"Yes, Miss Castlemaine, I have lived in hell. I have been deeper into its depths than Dante ever saw. The flames which he saw have burnt me, the 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,' which Shakespeare spoke of have crushed out of me all those qualities natural to humanity. Nay, I forgot, not all, not all!"
Again Olive Castlemaine shivered. She thought of Leicester again, she knew not why. Lately the thought of him had less and less possessed her mind. A man who had died more than six years before had naturally become more and more only a memory. She could not have told why she thought of him, for this stranger, with his thick black beard and dark skin, bore little resemblance to the pale-faced, clean-shaven man she had known and loved years ago. Besides, the voice, the manner of speech were different. He was cast in a larger mould than Leicester, too, and was older by many years.
"I am afraid my speech is distasteful to you," went on Ricordo, "and I plead your forgiveness. I am not used to your ways, your modes of expression. And I trust I have not offended you. Believe me, such a thought, such a desire is far from me."
"By no means," she said quickly. "I – I am very interested. Doubtless the experiences of those who have lived in other lands are different from those who spend their lives in surroundings such as these."
Signor Ricordo cast his eyes quickly around, and beheld one of the fairest tracts of country on earth. Spring had come early, and the bursting life everywhere made one think of a universal resurrection. All nature seemed to be throwing off its grave-clothes. Woods and hedgerows, fields and gardens seemed to be clothing themselves in a magic mantle before their eyes, while the choirs of heaven were chanting for very joy.
"I think it must be easy to be good amidst surroundings like these, and on such a day as this," said Olive.
Ricordo stopped suddenly, and lifted his head. His eyes flamed with a new light, his face betrayed passion.
"What is it all but mockery?" he said – "a promise never to be realised, the fair skin which covers disease – rottenness? Signorina – forgive me. But there are spots on earth fairer than this – fairer, yes, a thousand times. Flowers, foliage, compared with which all that you see is but a suggestion. The sun! Great Allah! have you seen an Eastern sun, have you seen the prodigality with which nature scatters her beauty? But goodness! When did ever natural beauty help what you call moral goodness? In those places where nature has been most bountiful in her gifts, there you find the blackest and foulest lives. What is everything, if there is a canker at the heart; what matters if hell goes on burning in our lives? Forgive me, signorina; if there is one thing in which I have agreed with your Christian preachers, it is that natural beauty is powerless to cleanse the heart of what you call sin."
"But surely a man is affected by his circumstances," interposed Herbert Briarfield.
"Is not nature always laughing at us?" said Ricordo. "We dream our little dreams, make our little plans, and live in a fool's paradise. Let people be surrounded by beautiful things, we say; let them have works of art, fine pictures, music; let them live in the sunshine, and behold the beauties of nature, then they will live beautiful lives. I have heard your moral reformers preach this – this nonsense. Well, what happens? Is the morality of your west of London any better than the east? Ah, but I tell you I have lived in the most beautiful places on earth, but they have been hell all the same. Can you cure a cancer by placing a bunch of flowers in the room of your patient?"
"Then what is your antidote – your gospel?" asked Olive.
"Is there the one or the other?" asked Ricordo.
