It remains still undecided. The Captain came into my study the next morning. He said: “If you haven’t written that letter to The Field, don’t mention my name. They know me on The Field. I would rather it did not get about that I have been playing with a man who cannot keep his ball within the four walls of a billiard-room.”
“Well,” I answered, “I know most of the fellows on The Field myself. They don’t often get hold of anything novel in the way of a story. When they do, they are apt to harp upon it. My idea was to keep my own name out of it altogether.”
“It is not a point likely to crop up often,” said the Captain. “I’d let it rest if I were you.”
I should like to have had it settled. In the end, I wrote the editor a careful letter, in a disguised hand, giving a false name and address. But if any answer ever appeared I must have missed it.
Myself I have a sort of consciousness that somewhere inside me there is quite a good player, if only I could persuade him to come out. He is shy, that is all. He does not seem able to play when people are looking on. The shots he misses when people are looking on would give you a wrong idea of him. When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not often see. If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when there is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them. Only once I played up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led to argument. I was staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the second evening a pleasant-spoken young fellow, who said he had read all my books—later, he appeared surprised on learning I had written more than two—asked me if I would care to play a hundred up. We played even, and I paid for the table. The next evening he said he thought it would make a better game if he gave me forty and I broke. It was a fairly close finish, and afterwards he suggested that I should put down my name for the handicap they were arranging.
“I am afraid,” I answered, “that I hardly play well enough. Just a quiet game with you is one thing; but in a handicap with a crowd looking on—”
“I should not let that trouble you,” he said; “there are some here who play worse than you—just one or two. It passes the evening.”
It was merely a friendly affair. I paid my twenty marks, and was given plus a hundred. I drew for my first game a chatty type of man, who started minus twenty. We neither of us did much for the first five minutes, and then I made a break of forty-four.
There was not a fluke in it from beginning to end. I was never more astonished in my life. It seemed to me it was the cue was doing it.
Minus Twenty was even more astonished. I heard him as I passed:
“Who handicapped this man?” he asked.
“I did,” said the pleasant-spoken youngster.
“Oh,” said Minus Twenty—“friend of yours, I presume?”
There are evenings that seem to belong to you. We finished that two hundred and fifty under the three-quarters of an hour. I explained to Minus Twenty—he was plus sixty-three at the end—that my play that night had been exceptional. He said that he had heard of cases similar. I left him talking volubly to the committee. He was not a nice man at all.
After that I did not care to win; and that of course was fatal. The less I tried, the more impossible it seemed for me to do wrong. I was left in at the last with a man from another hotel. But for that I am convinced I should have carried off the handicap. Our hotel didn’t, anyhow, want the other hotel to win. So they gathered round me, and offered me sound advice, and begged me to be careful; with the natural result that I went back to my usual form quite suddenly.
Never before or since have I played as I played that week. But it showed me what I could do. I shall get a new table, with proper pockets this time. There is something wrong about our pockets. The balls go into them and then come out again. You would think they had seen something there to frighten them. They come out trembling and hold on to the cushion.
I shall also get a new red ball. I fancy it must be a very old ball, our red. It seems to me to be always tired.
“The billiard-room,” I said to Dick, “I see my way to easily enough. Adding another ten feet to what is now the dairy will give us twenty-eight by twenty. I am hopeful that will be sufficient even for your friend Malooney. The drawing-room is too small to be of any use. I may decide—as Robina has suggested—to ‘throw it into the hall.’ But the stairs will remain. For dancing, private theatricals—things to keep you children out of mischief—I have an idea I will explain to you later on. The kitchen—”
“Can I have a room to myself?” asked Veronica.
Veronica was sitting on the floor, staring into the fire, her chin supported by her hand. Veronica, in those rare moments when she is resting from her troubles, wears a holy, far-away expression apt to mislead the stranger. Governesses, new to her, have their doubts whether on these occasions they are justified in dragging her back to discuss mere dates and tables. Poets who are friends of mine, coming unexpectedly upon Veronica standing by the window, gazing upward at the evening star, have thought it was a vision, until they got closer and found that she was sucking peppermints.
“I should so like to have a room all to myself,” added Veronica.
“It would be a room!” commented Robin.
“It wouldn’t have your hairpins sticking up all over the bed, anyhow,” murmured Veronica dreamily.
“I like that!” said Robin; “why—”
“You’re harder than I am,” said Veronica.
“I should wish you to have a room, Veronica,” I said. “My fear is that in place of one untidy bedroom in the house—a room that makes me shudder every time I see it through the open door; and the door, in spite of all I can say, generally is wide open—”
“I’m not untidy,” said Robin, “not really. I know where everything is in the dark—if people would only leave them alone.”
“You are. You’re about the most untidy girl I know,” said Dick.
“I’m not,” said Robin; “you don’t see other girls’ rooms. Look at yours at Cambridge. Malooney told us you’d had a fire, and we all believed him at first.”
“When a man’s working—” said Dick.
“He must have an orderly place to work in,” suggested Robin.
Dick sighed. “It’s never any good talking to you,” said Dick. “You don’t even see your own faults.”
“I can,” said Robin; “I see them more than anyone. All I claim is justice.”
“Show me, Veronica,” I said, “that you are worthy to possess a room. At present you appear to regard the whole house as your room. I find your gaiters on the croquet lawn. A portion of your costume—an article that anyone possessed of the true feelings of a lady would desire to keep hidden from the world—is discovered waving from the staircase window.”
“I put it out to be mended,” explained Veronica.
“You opened the door and flung it out. I told you of it at the time,” said Robin. “You do the same with your boots.”
“You are too high-spirited for your size,” explained Dick to her. “Try to be less dashing.”
“I could also wish, Veronica,” I continued, “that you shed your back comb less easily, or at least that you knew when you had shed it. As for your gloves—well, hunting your gloves has come to be our leading winter sport.”
“People look in such funny places for them,” said Veronica.