- The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P. G. Wodehouse
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- Title: The Clicking of Cuthbert
- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
- Posting Date: August 26, 2012 [EBook #7028]
- Release Date: December, 2004
- First Posted: February 24, 2003
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT ***
- Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
- Distributed Proofreading Team
- THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT
- by P. G. Wodehouse
- 1922
- DEDICATION
- TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF
- JOHN HENRIE AND PAT ROGIE
- WHO AT EDINBURGH IN THE YEAR 1593 A.D.
- WERE IMPRISONED FOR
- "PLAYING OF THE GOWFF ON THE LINKS OF LEITH
- EVERY SABBATH THE TIME OF THE SERMONSES",
- ALSO OF ROBERT ROBERTSON WHO GOT IT IN THE NECK
- IN 1604 A.D. FOR THE SAME REASON
- FORE!
- This book marks an epoch in my literary career. It is written in
- blood. It is the outpouring of a soul as deeply seared by Fate's
- unkindness as the fairway on the dog-leg hole of the second nine was
- ever seared by my iron. It is the work of a very nearly desperate man,
- an eighteen-handicap man who has got to look extremely slippy if he
- doesn't want to find himself in the twenties again.
- As a writer of light fiction, I have always till now been handicapped
- by the fact that my disposition was cheerful, my heart intact, and my
- life unsoured. Handicapped, I say, because the public likes to feel
- that a writer of farcical stories is piquantly miserable in his private
- life, and that, if he turns out anything amusing, he does it simply in
- order to obtain relief from the almost insupportable weight of an
- existence which he has long since realized to be a wash-out. Well,
- today I am just like that.
- Two years ago, I admit, I was a shallow _farceur_. My work lacked
- depth. I wrote flippantly simply because I was having a thoroughly good
- time. Then I took up golf, and now I can smile through the tears and
- laugh, like Figaro, that I may not weep, and generally hold my head up
- and feel that I am entitled to respect.
- If you find anything in this volume that amuses you, kindly bear in
- mind that it was probably written on my return home after losing three
- balls in the gorse or breaking the head off a favourite driver: and,
- with a murmured "Brave fellow! Brave fellow!" recall the story of the
- clown jesting while his child lay dying at home. That is all. Thank you
- for your sympathy. It means more to me than I can say. Do you think
- that if I tried the square stance for a bit.... But, after all, this
- cannot interest you. Leave me to my misery.
- POSTSCRIPT.--In the second chapter I allude to Stout Cortez staring at
- the Pacific. Shortly after the appearance of this narrative in serial
- form in America, I received an anonymous letter containing the words,
- "You big stiff, it wasn't Cortez, it was Balboa." This, I believe, is
- historically accurate. On the other hand, if Cortez was good enough for
- Keats, he is good enough for me. Besides, even if it _was_ Balboa,
- the Pacific was open for being stared at about that time, and I see no
- reason why Cortez should not have had a look at it as well.
- P. G. WODEHOUSE.
- CONTENTS
- FORE!
- CHAPTER
- I. THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT
- II. A WOMAN IS ONLY A WOMAN
- III. A MIXED THREESOME
- IV. SUNDERED HEARTS
- V. THE SALVATION OF GEORGE MACKINTOSH
- VI. ORDEAL BY GOLF
- VII. THE LONG HOLE
- VIII. THE HEEL OF ACHILLES
- IX. THE ROUGH STUFF
- X. THE COMING OF GOWF
- 1
- _The Clicking of Cuthbert_
- The young man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and flung
- his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodily into an arm-chair
- and pressed the bell.
- "Waiter!"
- "Sir?"
- The young man pointed at the bag with every evidence of distaste.
- "You may have these clubs," he said. "Take them away. If you don't want
- them yourself, give them to one of the caddies."
- Across the room the Oldest Member gazed at him with a grave sadness
- through the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy--the eye of
- a man who, as the poet says, has seen Golf steadily and seen it whole.
- "You are giving up golf?" he said.
- He was not altogether unprepared for such an attitude on the young
- man's part: for from his eyrie on the terrace above the ninth green he
- had observed him start out on the afternoon's round and had seen him
- lose a couple of balls in the lake at the second hole after taking
- seven strokes at the first.
- "Yes!" cried the young man fiercely. "For ever, dammit! Footling game!
- Blanked infernal fat-headed silly ass of a game! Nothing but a waste of
- time."
- The Sage winced.
- "Don't say that, my boy."
- "But I do say it. What earthly good is golf? Life is stern and life is
- earnest. We live in a practical age. All round us we see foreign
- competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing
- golf! What do we get out of it? Is golf any _use_? That's what I'm
- asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this
- pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good?"
- The Sage smiled gently.
- "I could name a thousand."
- "One will do."
- "I will select," said the Sage, "from the innumerable memories that
- rush to my mind, the story of Cuthbert Banks."
- "Never heard of him."
- "Be of good cheer," said the Oldest Member. "You are going to hear of
- him now."
- * * * * *
- It was in the picturesque little settlement of Wood Hills (said the
- Oldest Member) that the incidents occurred which I am about to relate.
- Even if you have never been in Wood Hills, that suburban paradise is
- probably familiar to you by name. Situated at a convenient distance
- from the city, it combines in a notable manner the advantages of town
- life with the pleasant surroundings and healthful air of the country.
- Its inhabitants live in commodious houses, standing in their own
- grounds, and enjoy so many luxuries--such as gravel soil, main
- drainage, electric light, telephone, baths (h. and c.), and company's
- own water, that you might be pardoned for imagining life to be so ideal
- for them that no possible improvement could be added to their lot. Mrs.
- Willoughby Smethurst was under no such delusion. What Wood Hills needed
- to make it perfect, she realized, was Culture. Material comforts are
- all very well, but, if the _summum bonum_ is to be achieved, the
- Soul also demands a look in, and it was Mrs. Smethurst's unfaltering
- resolve that never while she had her strength should the Soul be handed
- the loser's end. It was her intention to make Wood Hills a centre of
- all that was most cultivated and refined, and, golly! how she had
- succeeded. Under her presidency the Wood Hills Literary and Debating
- Society had tripled its membership.
- But there is always a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad.
- The local golf club, an institution to which Mrs. Smethurst strongly
- objected, had also tripled its membership; and the division of the
- community into two rival camps, the Golfers and the Cultured, had
- become more marked than ever. This division, always acute, had attained
- now to the dimensions of a Schism. The rival sects treated one another
- with a cold hostility.
- Unfortunate episodes came to widen the breach. Mrs. Smethurst's house
- adjoined the links, standing to the right of the fourth tee: and, as
- the Literary Society was in the habit of entertaining visiting
- lecturers, many a golfer had foozled his drive owing to sudden loud
- outbursts of applause coinciding with his down-swing. And not long
- before this story opens a sliced ball, whizzing in at the open window,
- had come within an ace of incapacitating Raymond Parsloe Devine, the
- rising young novelist (who rose at that moment a clear foot and a half)
- from any further exercise of his art. Two inches, indeed, to the right
- and Raymond must inevitably have handed in his dinner-pail.
- To make matters worse, a ring at the front-door bell followed almost
- immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing appearance
- in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers who apologetically but firmly
- insisted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what with the shock of
- the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing
- on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon's session
- had to be classed as a complete frost. Mr. Devine's determination, from
- which no argument could swerve him, to deliver the rest of his lecture
- in the coal-cellar gave the meeting a jolt from which it never
- recovered.
- I have dwelt upon this incident, because it was the means of
- introducing Cuthbert Banks to Mrs. Smethurst's niece, Adeline. As
- Cuthbert, for it was he who had so nearly reduced the muster-roll of
- rising novelists by one, hopped down from the table after his stroke,
- he was suddenly aware that a beautiful girl was looking at him
- intently. As a matter of fact, everyone in the room was looking at him
- intently, none more so than Raymond Parsloe Devine, but none of the
- others were beautiful girls. Long as the members of Wood Hills Literary
- Society were on brain, they were short on looks, and, to Cuthbert's
- excited eye, Adeline Smethurst stood out like a jewel in a pile of
- coke.
- He had never seen her before, for she had only arrived at her aunt's
- house on the previous day, but he was perfectly certain that life, even
- when lived in the midst of gravel soil, main drainage, and company's
- own water, was going to be a pretty poor affair if he did not see her
- again. Yes, Cuthbert was in love: and it is interesting to record, as
- showing the effect of the tender emotion on a man's game, that twenty
- minutes after he had met Adeline he did the short eleventh in one, and
- as near as a toucher got a three on the four-hundred-yard twelfth.
- I will skip lightly over the intermediate stages of Cuthbert's
- courtship and come to the moment when--at the annual ball in aid of the
- local Cottage Hospital, the only occasion during the year on which the
- lion, so to speak, lay down with the lamb, and the Golfers and the
- Cultured met on terms of easy comradeship, their differences
- temporarily laid aside--he proposed to Adeline and was badly stymied.
- That fair, soulful girl could not see him with a spy-glass.
- "Mr. Banks," she said, "I will speak frankly."
- "Charge right ahead," assented Cuthbert.
- "Deeply sensible as I am of----"
- "I know. Of the honour and the compliment and all that. But, passing
- lightly over all that guff, what seems to be the trouble? I love you to
- distraction----"
- "Love is not everything."
- "You're wrong," said Cuthbert, earnestly. "You're right off it.
- Love----" And he was about to dilate on the theme when she interrupted
- him.
- "I am a girl of ambition."
- "And very nice, too," said Cuthbert.
- "I am a girl of ambition," repeated Adeline, "and I realize that the
- fulfilment of my ambitions must come through my husband. I am very
- ordinary myself----"
- "What!" cried Cuthbert. "You ordinary? Why, you are a pearl among
- women, the queen of your sex. You can't have been looking in a glass
- lately. You stand alone. Simply alone. You make the rest look like
- battered repaints."
- "Well," said Adeline, softening a trifle, "I believe I am fairly
- good-looking----"
- "Anybody who was content to call you fairly good-looking would describe
- the Taj Mahal as a pretty nifty tomb."
- "But that is not the point. What I mean is, if I marry a nonentity I
- shall be a nonentity myself for ever. And I would sooner die than be a
- nonentity."
- "And, if I follow your reasoning, you think that that lets _me_
- out?"
- "Well, really, Mr. Banks, _have_ you done anything, or are you
- likely ever to do anything worth while?"
- Cuthbert hesitated.
- "It's true," he said, "I didn't finish in the first ten in the Open,
- and I was knocked out in the semi-final of the Amateur, but I won the
- French Open last year."
- "The--what?"
- "The French Open Championship. Golf, you know."
- "Golf! You waste all your time playing golf. I admire a man who is more
- spiritual, more intellectual."
- A pang of jealousy rent Cuthbert's bosom.
- "Like What's-his-name Devine?" he said, sullenly.
- "Mr. Devine," replied Adeline, blushing faintly, "is going to be a
- great man. Already he has achieved much. The critics say that he is
- more Russian than any other young English writer."
- "And is that good?"
- "Of course it's good."
- "I should have thought the wheeze would be to be more English than any
- other young English writer."
- "Nonsense! Who wants an English writer to be English? You've got to be
- Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success. The mantle of the
- great Russians has descended on Mr. Devine."
- "From what I've heard of Russians, I should hate to have that happen to
- _me_."
- "There is no danger of that," said Adeline scornfully.
- "Oh! Well, let me tell you that there is a lot more in me than you
- think."
- "That might easily be so."
- "You think I'm not spiritual and intellectual," said Cuthbert, deeply
- moved. "Very well. Tomorrow I join the Literary Society."
- Even as he spoke the words his leg was itching to kick himself for
- being such a chump, but the sudden expression of pleasure on Adeline's
- face soothed him; and he went home that night with the feeling that he
- had taken on something rather attractive. It was only in the cold, grey
- light of the morning that he realized what he had let himself in for.
- I do not know if you have had any experience of suburban literary
- societies, but the one that flourished under the eye of Mrs. Willoughby
- Smethurst at Wood Hills was rather more so than the average. With my
- feeble powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that
- Cuthbert Banks endured in the next few weeks. And, even if I could, I
- doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror,
- as Aristotle recommends, but there are limits. In the ancient Greek
- tragedies it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should
- take place off-stage, and I shall follow this admirable principle. It
- will suffice if I say merely that J. Cuthbert Banks had a thin time.
- After attending eleven debates and fourteen lectures on _vers libre_
- Poetry, the Seventeenth-Century Essayists, the Neo-Scandinavian
- Movement in Portuguese Literature, and other subjects of a similar
- nature, he grew so enfeebled that, on the rare occasions when he had
- time for a visit to the links, he had to take a full iron for his mashie
- shots.
- It was not simply the oppressive nature of the debates and lectures
- that sapped his vitality. What really got right in amongst him was the
- torture of seeing Adeline's adoration of Raymond Parsloe Devine. The
- man seemed to have made the deepest possible impression upon her
- plastic emotions. When he spoke, she leaned forward with parted lips
- and looked at him. When he was not speaking--which was seldom--she
- leaned back and looked at him. And when he happened to take the next
- seat to her, she leaned sideways and looked at him. One glance at Mr.
- Devine would have been more than enough for Cuthbert; but Adeline found
- him a spectacle that never palled. She could not have gazed at him with
- a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child and he a
- saucer of ice-cream. All this Cuthbert had to witness while still
- endeavouring to retain the possession of his faculties sufficiently to
- enable him to duck and back away if somebody suddenly asked him what he
- thought of the sombre realism of Vladimir Brusiloff. It is little
- wonder that he tossed in bed, picking at the coverlet, through
- sleepless nights, and had to have all his waistcoats taken in three
- inches to keep them from sagging.
- This Vladimir Brusiloff to whom I have referred was the famous Russian
- novelist, and, owing to the fact of his being in the country on a
- lecturing tour at the moment, there had been something of a boom in his
- works. The Wood Hills Literary Society had been studying them for
- weeks, and never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had
- Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir
- specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened
- till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit
- suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto
- had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of
- the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry.
- But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must
- have cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of
- the internecine strife which was proceeding so briskly in Russia.
- Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the
- rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were
- murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually
- give out.
- One morning, as he tottered down the road for the short walk which was
- now almost the only exercise to which he was equal, Cuthbert met
- Adeline. A spasm of anguish flitted through all his nerve-centres as he
- saw that she was accompanied by Raymond Parsloe Devine.
- "Good morning, Mr. Banks," said Adeline.
- "Good morning," said Cuthbert hollowly.
- "Such good news about Vladimir Brusiloff."
- "Dead?" said Cuthbert, with a touch of hope.
- "Dead? Of course not. Why should he be? No, Aunt Emily met his manager
- after his lecture at Queen's Hall yesterday, and he has promised that
- Mr. Brusiloff shall come to her next Wednesday reception."
- "Oh, ah!" said Cuthbert, dully.
- "I don't know how she managed it. I think she must have told him that
- Mr. Devine would be there to meet him."
- "But you said he was coming," argued Cuthbert.
- "I shall be very glad," said Raymond Devine, "of the opportunity of
- meeting Brusiloff."
- "I'm sure," said Adeline, "he will be very glad of the opportunity of
- meeting you."
- "Possibly," said Mr. Devine. "Possibly. Competent critics have said
- that my work closely resembles that of the great Russian Masters."
- "Your psychology is so deep."
- "Yes, yes."
- "And your atmosphere."
- "Quite."
- Cuthbert in a perfect agony of spirit prepared to withdraw from this
- love-feast. The sun was shining brightly, but the world was black to
- him. Birds sang in the tree-tops, but he did not hear them. He might
- have been a moujik for all the pleasure he found in life.
- "You will be there, Mr. Banks?" said Adeline, as he turned away.
- "Oh, all right," said Cuthbert.
- When Cuthbert had entered the drawing-room on the following Wednesday
- and had taken his usual place in a distant corner where, while able to
- feast his gaze on Adeline, he had a sporting chance of being overlooked
- or mistaken for a piece of furniture, he perceived the great Russian
- thinker seated in the midst of a circle of admiring females. Raymond
- Parsloe Devine had not yet arrived.
- His first glance at the novelist surprised Cuthbert. Doubtless with the
- best motives, Vladimir Brusiloff had permitted his face to become
- almost entirely concealed behind a dense zareba of hair, but his eyes
- were visible through the undergrowth, and it seemed to Cuthbert that
- there was an expression in them not unlike that of a cat in a strange
- backyard surrounded by small boys. The man looked forlorn and hopeless,
- and Cuthbert wondered whether he had had bad news from home.
- This was not the case. The latest news which Vladimir Brusiloff had had
- from Russia had been particularly cheering. Three of his principal
- creditors had perished in the last massacre of the _bourgeoisie_,
- and a man whom he owed for five years for a samovar and a pair of
- overshoes had fled the country, and had not been heard of since. It was
- not bad news from home that was depressing Vladimir. What was wrong
- with him was the fact that this was the eighty-second suburban literary
- reception he had been compelled to attend since he had landed in the
- country on his lecturing tour, and he was sick to death of it. When his
- agent had first suggested the trip, he had signed on the dotted line
- without an instant's hesitation. Worked out in roubles, the fees
- offered had seemed just about right. But now, as he peered through
- the brushwood at the faces round him, and realized that eight out of
- ten of those present had manuscripts of some sort concealed on their
- persons, and were only waiting for an opportunity to whip them out
- and start reading, he wished that he had stayed at his quiet home in
- Nijni-Novgorod, where the worst thing that could happen to a fellow
- was a brace of bombs coming in through the window and mixing
- themselves up with his breakfast egg.
- At this point in his meditations he was aware that his hostess was
- looming up before him with a pale young man in horn-rimmed spectacles
- at her side. There was in Mrs. Smethurst's demeanour something of the
- unction of the master-of-ceremonies at the big fight who introduces the
- earnest gentleman who wishes to challenge the winner.
- "Oh, Mr. Brusiloff," said Mrs. Smethurst, "I do so want you to meet Mr.
- Raymond Parsloe Devine, whose work I expect you know. He is one of our
- younger novelists."
- The distinguished visitor peered in a wary and defensive manner through
- the shrubbery, but did not speak. Inwardly he was thinking how exactly
- like Mr. Devine was to the eighty-one other younger novelists to whom
- he had been introduced at various hamlets throughout the country.
- Raymond Parsloe Devine bowed courteously, while Cuthbert, wedged into
- his corner, glowered at him.
- "The critics," said Mr. Devine, "have been kind enough to say that my
- poor efforts contain a good deal of the Russian spirit. I owe much to
- the great Russians. I have been greatly influenced by Sovietski."
- Down in the forest something stirred. It was Vladimir Brusiloff's mouth
- opening, as he prepared to speak. He was not a man who prattled
- readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that
- each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of
- mining. He glared bleakly at Mr. Devine, and allowed three words to
- drop out of him.
- "Sovietski no good!"
- He paused for a moment, set the machinery working again, and delivered
- five more at the pithead.
- "I spit me of Sovietski!"
- There was a painful sensation. The lot of a popular idol is in many
- ways an enviable one, but it has the drawback of uncertainty. Here
- today and gone tomorrow. Until this moment Raymond Parsloe Devine's
- stock had stood at something considerably over par in Wood Hills
- intellectual circles, but now there was a rapid slump. Hitherto he had
- been greatly admired for being influenced by Sovietski, but it appeared
- now that this was not a good thing to be. It was evidently a rotten
- thing to be. The law could not touch you for being influenced by
- Sovietski, but there is an ethical as well as a legal code, and this it
- was obvious that Raymond Parsloe Devine had transgressed. Women drew
- away from him slightly, holding their skirts. Men looked at him
- censoriously. Adeline Smethurst started violently, and dropped a
- tea-cup. And Cuthbert Banks, doing his popular imitation of a sardine
- in his corner, felt for the first time that life held something of
- sunshine.
- Raymond Parsloe Devine was plainly shaken, but he made an adroit
- attempt to recover his lost prestige.
- "When I say I have been influenced by Sovietski, I mean, of course,
- that I was once under his spell. A young writer commits many follies. I
- have long since passed through that phase. The false glamour of
- Sovietski has ceased to dazzle me. I now belong whole-heartedly to the
- school of Nastikoff."
- There was a reaction. People nodded at one another sympathetically.
- After all, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, and a lapse
- at the outset of one's career should not be held against one who has
- eventually seen the light.
- "Nastikoff no good," said Vladimir Brusiloff, coldly. He paused,
- listening to the machinery.
- "Nastikoff worse than Sovietski."
- He paused again.
- "I spit me of Nastikoff!" he said.
- This time there was no doubt about it. The bottom had dropped out of
- the market, and Raymond Parsloe Devine Preferred were down in the
- cellar with no takers. It was clear to the entire assembled company
- that they had been all wrong about Raymond Parsloe Devine. They had
- allowed him to play on their innocence and sell them a pup. They had
- taken him at his own valuation, and had been cheated into admiring him
- as a man who amounted to something, and all the while he had belonged
- to the school of Nastikoff. You never can tell. Mrs. Smethurst's guests
- were well-bred, and there was consequently no violent demonstration,
- but you could see by their faces what they felt. Those nearest Raymond
- Parsloe jostled to get further away. Mrs. Smethurst eyed him stonily
- through a raised lorgnette. One or two low hisses were heard, and over
- at the other end of the room somebody opened the window in a marked
- manner.
- Raymond Parsloe Devine hesitated for a moment, then, realizing his
- situation, turned and slunk to the door. There was an audible sigh of
- relief as it closed behind him.
- Vladimir Brusiloff proceeded to sum up.
- "No novelists any good except me. Sovietski--yah! Nastikoff--bah! I spit
- me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G.
- Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any
- good except me."
- And, having uttered this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a
- near-by plate, steered it through the jungle, and began to champ.
- It is too much to say that there was a dead silence. There could never
- be that in any room in which Vladimir Brusiloff was eating cake. But
- certainly what you might call the general chit-chat was pretty well
- down and out. Nobody liked to be the first to speak. The members of the
- Wood Hills Literary Society looked at one another timidly. Cuthbert,
- for his part, gazed at Adeline; and Adeline gazed into space. It was
- plain that the girl was deeply stirred. Her eyes were opened wide, a
- faint flush crimsoned her cheeks, and her breath was coming quickly.
- Adeline's mind was in a whirl. She felt as if she had been walking
- gaily along a pleasant path and had stopped suddenly on the very brink
- of a precipice. It would be idle to deny that Raymond Parsloe Devine
- had attracted her extraordinarily. She had taken him at his own
- valuation as an extremely hot potato, and her hero-worship had
- gradually been turning into love. And now her hero had been shown to
- have feet of clay. It was hard, I consider, on Raymond Parsloe Devine,
- but that is how it goes in this world. You get a following as a
- celebrity, and then you run up against another bigger celebrity and
- your admirers desert you. One could moralize on this at considerable
- length, but better not, perhaps. Enough to say that the glamour of
- Raymond Devine ceased abruptly in that moment for Adeline, and her most
- coherent thought at this juncture was the resolve, as soon as she got
- up to her room, to burn the three signed photographs he had sent her
- and to give the autographed presentation set of his books to the
- grocer's boy.
- Mrs. Smethurst, meanwhile, having rallied somewhat, was endeavouring to
- set the feast of reason and flow of soul going again.
- "And how do you like England, Mr. Brusiloff?" she asked.
- The celebrity paused in the act of lowering another segment of cake.
- "Dam good," he replied, cordially.
- "I suppose you have travelled all over the country by this time?"
- "You said it," agreed the Thinker.
- "Have you met many of our great public men?"
- "Yais--Yais--Quite a few of the nibs--Lloyid Gorge, I meet him. But----"
- Beneath the matting a discontented expression came into his face, and
- his voice took on a peevish note. "But I not meet your real great
- men--your Arbmishel, your Arreevadon--I not meet them. That's what
- gives me the pipovitch. Have _you_ ever met Arbmishel and
- Arreevadon?"
- A strained, anguished look came into Mrs. Smethurst's face and was
- reflected in the faces of the other members of the circle. The eminent
- Russian had sprung two entirely new ones on them, and they felt that
- their ignorance was about to be exposed. What would Vladimir Brusiloff
- think of the Wood Hills Literary Society? The reputation of the Wood
- Hills Literary Society was at stake, trembling in the balance, and
- coming up for the third time. In dumb agony Mrs. Smethurst rolled her
- eyes about the room searching for someone capable of coming to the
- rescue. She drew blank.
- And then, from a distant corner, there sounded a deprecating, cough,
- and those nearest Cuthbert Banks saw that he had stopped twisting his
- right foot round his left ankle and his left foot round his right ankle
- and was sitting up with a light of almost human intelligence in his
- eyes.
- "Er----" said Cuthbert, blushing as every eye in the room seemed to fix
- itself on him, "I think he means Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon."
- "Abe Mitchell and Harry Vardon?" repeated Mrs. Smethurst, blankly. "I
- never heard of----"
- "Yais! Yais! Most! Very!" shouted Vladimir Brusiloff, enthusiastically.
- "Arbmishel and Arreevadon. You know them, yes, what, no, perhaps?"
- "I've played with Abe Mitchell often, and I was partnered with Harry
- Vardon in last year's Open."
- The great Russian uttered a cry that shook the chandelier.
- "You play in ze Open? Why," he demanded reproachfully of Mrs.
- Smethurst, "was I not been introducted to this young man who play in
- opens?"
- "Well, really," faltered Mrs. Smethurst. "Well, the fact is, Mr.
- Brusiloff----"
- She broke off. She was unequal to the task of explaining, without
- hurting anyone's feelings, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a
- piece of cheese and a blot on the landscape.
- "Introduct me!" thundered the Celebrity.
- "Why, certainly, certainly, of course. This is Mr.----."
- She looked appealingly at Cuthbert.
- "Banks," prompted Cuthbert.
- "Banks!" cried Vladimir Brusiloff. "Not Cootaboot Banks?"
- "_Is_ your name Cootaboot?" asked Mrs. Smethurst, faintly.
- "Well, it's Cuthbert."
- "Yais! Yais! Cootaboot!" There was a rush and swirl, as the
- effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to
- where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment eyeing him excitedly, then,
- stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get
- his guard up. "My dear young man, I saw you win ze French Open. Great!
- Great! Grand! Superb! Hot stuff, and you can say I said so! Will you
- permit one who is but eighteen at Nijni-Novgorod to salute you once
- more?"
- And he kissed Cuthbert again. Then, brushing aside one or two
- intellectuals who were in the way, he dragged up a chair and sat down.
- "You are a great man!" he said.
- "Oh, no," said Cuthbert modestly.
- "Yais! Great. Most! Very! The way you lay your approach-putts dead from
- anywhere!"
- "Oh, I don't know."
- Mr. Brusiloff drew his chair closer.
- "Let me tell you one vairy funny story about putting. It was one day I
- play at Nijni-Novgorod with the pro. against Lenin and Trotsky, and
- Trotsky had a two-inch putt for the hole. But, just as he addresses the
- ball, someone in the crowd he tries to assassinate Lenin with a
- rewolwer--you know that is our great national sport, trying to
- assassinate Lenin with rewolwers--and the bang puts Trotsky off his
- stroke and he goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is
- rather shaken, you understand, he misses again himself, and we win the
- hole and match and I clean up three hundred and ninety-six thousand
- roubles, or fifteen shillings in your money. Some gameovitch! And now
- let me tell you one other vairy funny story----"
- Desultory conversation had begun in murmurs over the rest of the room,
- as the Wood Hills intellectuals politely endeavoured to conceal the
- fact that they realized that they were about as much out of it at this
- re-union of twin souls as cats at a dog-show. From time to time they
- started as Vladimir Brusiloff's laugh boomed out. Perhaps it was a
- consolation to them to know that he was enjoying himself.
- As for Adeline, how shall I describe her emotions? She was stunned.
- Before her very eyes the stone which the builders had rejected had
- become the main thing, the hundred-to-one shot had walked away with the
- race. A rush of tender admiration for Cuthbert Banks flooded her heart.
- She saw that she had been all wrong. Cuthbert, whom she had always
- treated with a patronizing superiority, was really a man to be looked
- up to and worshipped. A deep, dreamy sigh shook Adeline's fragile form.
- Half an hour later Vladimir and Cuthbert Banks rose.
- "Goot-a-bye, Mrs. Smet-thirst," said the Celebrity. "Zank you for a
- most charming visit. My friend Cootaboot and me we go now to shoot a
- few holes. You will lend me clobs, friend Cootaboot?"
- "Any you want."
- "The niblicksky is what I use most. Goot-a-bye, Mrs. Smet-thirst."
- They were moving to the door, when Cuthbert felt a light touch on his
- arm. Adeline was looking up at him tenderly.
- "May I come, too, and walk round with you?"
- Cuthbert's bosom heaved.
- "Oh," he said, with a tremor in his voice, "that you would walk round
- with me for life!"
- Her eyes met his.
- "Perhaps," she whispered, softly, "it could be arranged."
- * * * * *
- "And so," (concluded the Oldest Member), "you see that golf can be of
- the greatest practical assistance to a man in Life's struggle. Raymond
- Parsloe Devine, who was no player, had to move out of the neighbourhood
- immediately, and is now, I believe, writing scenarios out in California
- for the Flicker Film Company. Adeline is married to Cuthbert, and it
- was only his earnest pleading which prevented her from having their
- eldest son christened Abe Mitchell Ribbed-Faced Mashie Banks, for she
- is now as keen a devotee of the great game as her husband. Those who
- know them say that theirs is a union so devoted, so----"
- * * * * *
- The Sage broke off abruptly, for the young man had rushed to the door
- and out into the passage. Through the open door he could hear him
- crying passionately to the waiter to bring back his clubs.
- 2
- _A Woman is only a Woman_
- On a fine day in the spring, summer, or early autumn, there are few
- spots more delightful than the terrace in front of our Golf Club. It is
- a vantage-point peculiarly fitted to the man of philosophic mind: for
- from it may be seen that varied, never-ending pageant, which men call
- Golf, in a number of its aspects. To your right, on the first tee,
- stand the cheery optimists who are about to make their opening drive,
- happily conscious that even a topped shot will trickle a measurable
- distance down the steep hill. Away in the valley, directly in front of
- you, is the lake hole, where these same optimists will be converted to
- pessimism by the wet splash of a new ball. At your side is the ninth
- green, with its sinuous undulations which have so often wrecked the
- returning traveller in sight of home. And at various points within your
- line of vision are the third tee, the sixth tee, and the sinister
- bunkers about the eighth green--none of them lacking in food for the
- reflective mind.
- It is on this terrace that the Oldest Member sits, watching the younger
- generation knocking at the divot. His gaze wanders from Jimmy
- Fothergill's two-hundred-and-twenty-yard drive down the hill to the
- silver drops that flash up in the sun, as young Freddie Woosley's
- mashie-shot drops weakly into the waters of the lake. Returning, it
- rests upon Peter Willard, large and tall, and James Todd, small and
- slender, as they struggle up the fair-way of the ninth.
- * * * * *
- Love (says the Oldest Member) is an emotion which your true golfer
- should always treat with suspicion. Do not misunderstand me. I am not
- saying that love is a bad thing, only that it is an unknown quantity. I
- have known cases where marriage improved a man's game, and other cases
- where it seemed to put him right off his stroke. There seems to be no
- fixed rule. But what I do say is that a golfer should be cautious. He
- should not be led away by the first pretty face. I will tell you a
- story that illustrates the point. It is the story of those two men who
- have just got on to the ninth green--Peter Willard and James Todd.
- There is about great friendships between man and man (said the Oldest
- Member) a certain inevitability that can only be compared with the
- age-old association of ham and eggs. No one can say when it was that
- these two wholesome and palatable food-stuffs first came together, nor
- what was the mutual magnetism that brought their deathless partnership
- about. One simply feels that it is one of the things that must be so.
- Similarly with men. Who can trace to its first beginnings the love of
- Damon for Pythias, of David for Jonathan, of Swan for Edgar? Who can
- explain what it was about Crosse that first attracted Blackwell? We
- simply say, "These men are friends," and leave it at that.
- In the case of Peter Willard and James Todd, one may hazard the guess
- that the first link in the chain that bound them together was the fact
- that they took up golf within a few days of each other, and contrived,
- as time went on, to develop such equal form at the game that the most
- expert critics are still baffled in their efforts to decide which is
- the worse player. I have heard the point argued a hundred times without
- any conclusion being reached. Supporters of Peter claim that his
- driving off the tee entitles him to an unchallenged pre-eminence among
- the world's most hopeless foozlers--only to be discomfited later when
- the advocates of James show, by means of diagrams, that no one has ever
- surpassed their man in absolute incompetence with the spoon. It is one
- of those problems where debate is futile.
- Few things draw two men together more surely than a mutual inability to
- master golf, coupled with an intense and ever-increasing love for the
- game. At the end of the first few months, when a series of costly
- experiments had convinced both Peter and James that there was not a
- tottering grey-beard nor a toddling infant in the neighbourhood whose
- downfall they could encompass, the two became inseparable. It was
- pleasanter, they found, to play together, and go neck and neck round
- the eighteen holes, than to take on some lissome youngster who could
- spatter them all over the course with one old ball and a cut-down cleek
- stolen from his father; or some spavined elder who not only rubbed it
- into them, but was apt, between strokes, to bore them with personal
- reminiscences of the Crimean War. So they began to play together early
- and late. In the small hours before breakfast, long ere the first faint
- piping of the waking caddie made itself heard from the caddie-shed,
- they were half-way through their opening round. And at close of day,
- when bats wheeled against the steely sky and the "pro's" had stolen
- home to rest, you might see them in the deepening dusk, going through
- the concluding exercises of their final spasm. After dark, they visited
- each other's houses and read golf books.
- If you have gathered from what I have said that Peter Willard and James
- Todd were fond of golf, I am satisfied. That is the impression I
- intended to convey. They were real golfers, for real golf is a thing of
- the spirit, not of mere mechanical excellence of stroke.
- It must not be thought, however, that they devoted too much of their
- time and their thoughts to golf--assuming, indeed, that such a thing is
- possible. Each was connected with a business in the metropolis; and
- often, before he left for the links, Peter would go to the trouble and
- expense of ringing up the office to say he would not be coming in that
- day; while I myself have heard James--and this not once, but
- frequently--say, while lunching in the club-house, that he had half a
- mind to get Gracechurch Street on the 'phone and ask how things were
- going. They were, in fact, the type of men of whom England is
- proudest--the back-bone of a great country, toilers in the mart,
- untired businessmen, keen red-blooded men of affairs. If they played a
- little golf besides, who shall blame them?
- So they went on, day by day, happy and contented. And then the Woman
- came into their lives, like the Serpent in the Links of Eden, and
- perhaps for the first time they realized that they were not one
- entity--not one single, indivisible Something that made for topped
- drives and short putts--but two individuals, in whose breasts Nature
- had implanted other desires than the simple ambition some day to do the
- dog-leg hole on the second nine in under double figures. My friends
- tell me that, when I am relating a story, my language is inclined at
- times a little to obscure my meaning; but, if you understand from what
- I have been saying that James Todd and Peter Willard both fell in love
- with the same woman--all right, let us carry on. That is precisely what
- I was driving at.
- I have not the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with Grace
- Forrester. I have seen her in the distance, watering the flowers in her
- garden, and on these occasions her stance struck me as graceful. And
- once, at a picnic, I observed her killing wasps with a teaspoon, and
- was impressed by the freedom of the wrist-action of her back-swing.
- Beyond this, I can say little. But she must have been attractive, for
- there can be no doubt of the earnestness with which both Peter and
- James fell in love with her. I doubt if either slept a wink the night
- of the dance at which it was their privilege first to meet her.
- The next afternoon, happening to encounter Peter in the bunker near the
- eleventh green, James said:
- "That was a nice girl, that Miss What's-her-name."
- And Peter, pausing for a moment from his trench-digging, replied:
- "Yes."
- And then James, with a pang, knew that he had a rival, for he had not
- mentioned Miss Forrester's name, and yet Peter had divined that it was
- to her that he had referred.
- Love is a fever which, so to speak, drives off without wasting time on
- the address. On the very next morning after the conversation which I
- have related, James Todd rang Peter Willard up on the 'phone and
- cancelled their golf engagements for the day, on the plea of a sprained
- wrist. Peter, acknowledging the cancellation, stated that he himself
- had been on the point of ringing James up to say that he would be
- unable to play owing to a slight headache. They met at tea-time at Miss
- Forrester's house. James asked how Peter's headache was, and Peter said
- it was a little better. Peter inquired after James's sprained wrist,
- and was told it seemed on the mend. Miss Forrester dispensed tea and
- conversation to both impartially.
- They walked home together. After an awkward silence of twenty minutes,
- James said:
- "There is something about the atmosphere--the aura, shall I say?--that
- emanates from a good woman that makes a man feel that life has a new, a
- different meaning."
- Peter replied:
- "Yes."
- When they reached James's door, James said:
- "I won't ask you in tonight, old man. You want to go home and rest and
- cure that headache."
- "Yes," said Peter.
- There was another silence. Peter was thinking that, only a couple of
- days before, James had told him that he had a copy of Sandy MacBean's
- "How to Become a Scratch Man Your First Season by Studying Photographs"
- coming by parcel-post from town, and they had arranged to read it aloud
- together. By now, thought Peter, it must be lying on his friend's
- table. The thought saddened him. And James, guessing what was in
- Peter's mind, was saddened too. But he did not waver. He was in no mood
- to read MacBean's masterpiece that night. In the twenty minutes of
- silence after leaving Miss Forrester he had realized that "Grace"
- rhymes with "face", and he wanted to sit alone in his study and write
- poetry. The two men parted with a distant nod. I beg your pardon? Yes,
- you are right. Two distant nods. It was always a failing of mine to
- count the score erroneously.
- It is not my purpose to weary you by a minute recital of the happenings
- of each day that went by. On the surface, the lives of these two men
- seemed unchanged. They still played golf together, and during the round
- achieved towards each other a manner that, superficially, retained all
- its ancient cheeriness and affection. If--I should say--when, James
- topped his drive, Peter never failed to say "Hard luck!" And when--or,
- rather, if Peter managed not to top his, James invariably said "Great!"
- But things were not the same, and they knew it.
- It so happened, as it sometimes will on these occasions, for Fate is a
- dramatist who gets his best effects with a small cast, that Peter
- Willard and James Todd were the only visible aspirants for the hand of
- Miss Forrester. Right at the beginning young Freddie Woosley had seemed
- attracted by the girl, and had called once or twice with flowers and
- chocolates, but Freddie's affections never centred themselves on one
- object for more than a few days, and he had dropped out after the first
- week. From that time on it became clear to all of us that, if Grace
- Forrester intended to marry anyone in the place, it would be either
- James or Peter; and a good deal of interest was taken in the matter by
- the local sportsmen. So little was known of the form of the two men,
- neither having figured as principal in a love-affair before, that even
- money was the best you could get, and the market was sluggish. I think
- my own flutter of twelve golf-balls, taken up by Percival Brown, was
- the most substantial of any of the wagers. I selected James as the
- winner. Why, I can hardly say, unless that he had an aunt who
- contributed occasional stories to the "Woman's Sphere". These things
- sometimes weigh with a girl. On the other hand, George Lucas, who had
- half-a-dozen of ginger-ale on Peter, based his calculations on the fact
- that James wore knickerbockers on the links, and that no girl could
- possibly love a man with calves like that. In short, you see, we really
- had nothing to go on.
- Nor had James and Peter. The girl seemed to like them both equally.
- They never saw her except in each other's company. And it was not until
- one day when Grace Forrester was knitting a sweater that there seemed a
- chance of getting a clue to her hidden feelings.
- When the news began to spread through the place that Grace was knitting
- this sweater there was a big sensation. The thing seemed to us
- practically to amount to a declaration.
- That was the view that James Todd and Peter Willard took of it, and
- they used to call on Grace, watch her knitting, and come away with
- their heads full of complicated calculations. The whole thing hung on
- one point--to wit, what size the sweater was going to be. If it was
- large, then it must be for Peter; if small, then James was the lucky
- man. Neither dared to make open inquiries, but it began to seem almost
- impossible to find out the truth without them. No masculine eye can
- reckon up purls and plains and estimate the size of chest which the
- garment is destined to cover. Moreover, with amateur knitters there
- must always be allowed a margin for involuntary error. There were many
- cases during the war where our girls sent sweaters to their sweethearts
- which would have induced strangulation in their young brothers. The
- amateur sweater of those days was, in fact, practically tantamount to
- German propaganda.
- Peter and James were accordingly baffled. One evening the sweater would
- look small, and James would come away jubilant; the next it would have
- swollen over a vast area, and Peter would walk home singing. The
- suspense of the two men can readily be imagined. On the one hand, they
- wanted to know their fate; on the other, they fully realized that
- whoever the sweater was for would have to wear it. And, as it was a
- vivid pink and would probably not fit by a mile, their hearts quailed
- at the prospect.
- In all affairs of human tension there must come a breaking point. It
- came one night as the two men were walking home.
- "Peter," said James, stopping in mid-stride. He mopped his forehead.
- His manner had been feverish all the evening.
- "Yes?" said Peter.
- "I can't stand this any longer. I haven't had a good night's rest for
- weeks. We must find out definitely which of us is to have that
- sweater."
- "Let's go back and ask her," said Peter.
- So they turned back and rang the bell and went into the house and
- presented themselves before Miss Forrester.
- "Lovely evening," said James, to break the ice.
- "Superb," said Peter.
- "Delightful," said Miss Forrester, looking a little surprised at
- finding the troupe playing a return date without having booked it in
- advance.
- "To settle a bet," said James, "will you please tell us who--I should
- say, whom--you are knitting that sweater for?"
- "It is not a sweater," replied Miss Forrester, with a womanly candour
- that well became her. "It is a sock. And it is for my cousin Juliet's
- youngest son, Willie."
- "Good night," said James.
- "Good night," said Peter.
- "Good night," said Grace Forrester.
- It was during the long hours of the night, when ideas so often come to
- wakeful men, that James was struck by an admirable solution of his and
- Peter's difficulty. It seemed to him that, were one or the other to
- leave Woodhaven, the survivor would find himself in a position to
- conduct his wooing as wooing should be conducted. Hitherto, as I have
- indicated, neither had allowed the other to be more than a few minutes
- alone with the girl. They watched each other like hawks. When James
- called, Peter called. When Peter dropped in, James invariably popped
- round. The thing had resolved itself into a stalemate.
- The idea which now came to James was that he and Peter should settle
- their rivalry by an eighteen-hole match on the links. He thought very
- highly of the idea before he finally went to sleep, and in the morning
- the scheme looked just as good to him as it had done overnight.
- James was breakfasting next morning, preparatory to going round to
- disclose his plan to Peter, when Peter walked in, looking happier than
- he had done for days.
- "'Morning," said James.
- "'Morning," said Peter.
- Peter sat down and toyed absently with a slice of bacon.
- "I've got an idea," he said.
- "One isn't many," said James, bringing his knife down with a jerk-shot
- on a fried egg. "What is your idea?"
- "Got it last night as I was lying awake. It struck me that, if either
- of us was to clear out of this place, the other would have a fair
- chance. You know what I mean--with Her. At present we've got each other
- stymied. Now, how would it be," said Peter, abstractedly spreading
- marmalade on his bacon, "if we were to play an eighteen-hole match, the
- loser to leg out of the neighbourhood and stay away long enough to give
- the winner the chance to find out exactly how things stood?"
- James started so violently that he struck himself in the left eye with
- his fork.
- "That's exactly the idea I got last night, too."
- "Then it's a go?"
- "It's the only thing to do."
- There was silence for a moment. Both men were thinking. Remember, they
- were friends. For years they had shared each other's sorrows, joys, and
- golf-balls, and sliced into the same bunkers.
- Presently Peter said:
- "I shall miss you."
- "What do you mean, miss me?"
- "When you're gone. Woodhaven won't seem the same place. But of course
- you'll soon be able to come back. I sha'n't waste any time proposing."
- "Leave me your address," said James, "and I'll send you a wire when you
- can return. You won't be offended if I don't ask you to be best man at
- the wedding? In the circumstances it might be painful to you."
- Peter sighed dreamily.
- "We'll have the sitting-room done in blue. Her eyes are blue."
- "Remember," said James, "there will always be a knife and fork for you
- at our little nest. Grace is not the woman to want me to drop my
- bachelor friends."
- "Touching this match," said Peter. "Strict Royal and Ancient rules, of
- course?"
- "Certainly."
- "I mean to say--no offence, old man--but no grounding niblicks in
- bunkers."
- "Precisely. And, without hinting at anything personal, the ball shall
- be considered holed-out only when it is in the hole, not when it stops
- on the edge."
- "Undoubtedly. And--you know I don't want to hurt your feelings--missing
- the ball counts as a stroke, not as a practice-swing."
- "Exactly. And--you'll forgive me if I mention it--a player whose ball
- has fallen in the rough, may not pull up all the bushes within a radius
- of three feet."
- "In fact, strict rules."
- "Strict rules."
- They shook hands without more words. And presently Peter walked out,
- and James, with a guilty look over his shoulder, took down Sandy
- MacBean's great work from the bookshelf and began to study the
- photograph of the short approach-shot showing Mr. MacBean swinging from
- Point A, through dotted line B-C, to Point D, his head the while
- remaining rigid at the spot marked with a cross. He felt a little
- guiltily that he had stolen a march on his friend, and that the contest
- was as good as over.
- * * * * *
- I cannot recall a lovelier summer day than that on which the great
- Todd-Willard eighteen-hole match took place. It had rained during the
- night, and now the sun shone down from a clear blue sky on to turf that
- glistened more greenly than the young grass of early spring.
- Butterflies flitted to and fro; birds sang merrily. In short, all
- Nature smiled. And it is to be doubted if Nature ever had a better
- excuse for smiling--or even laughing outright; for matches like that
- between James Todd and Peter Willard do not occur every day.
- Whether it was that love had keyed them up, or whether hours of study
- of Braid's "Advanced Golf" and the Badminton Book had produced a
- belated effect, I cannot say; but both started off quite reasonably
- well. Our first hole, as you can see, is a bogey four, and James was
- dead on the pin in seven, leaving Peter, who had twice hit the United
- Kingdom with his mashie in mistake for the ball, a difficult putt for
- the half. Only one thing could happen when you left Peter a difficult
- putt; and James advanced to the lake hole one up, Peter, as he
- followed, trying to console himself with the thought that many of the
- best golfers prefer to lose the first hole and save themselves for a
- strong finish.
- Peter and James had played over the lake hole so often that they had
- become accustomed to it, and had grown into the habit of sinking a ball
- or two as a preliminary formality with much the same stoicism displayed
- by those kings in ancient and superstitious times who used to fling
- jewellery into the sea to propitiate it before they took a voyage. But
- today, by one of those miracles without which golf would not be golf,
- each of them got over with his first shot--and not only over, but dead
- on the pin. Our "pro." himself could not have done better.
- I think it was at this point that the two men began to go to pieces.
- They were in an excited frame of mind, and this thing unmanned them.
- You will no doubt recall Keats's poem about stout Cortez staring with
- eagle eyes at the Pacific while all his men gazed at each other with a
- wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien. Precisely so did Peter
- Willard and James Todd stare with eagle eyes at the second lake hole,
- and gaze at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a tee in
- Woodhaven. They had dreamed of such a happening so often and woke to
- find the vision false, that at first they could not believe that the
- thing had actually occurred.
- "I got over!" whispered James, in an awed voice.
- "So did I!" muttered Peter.
- "In one!"
- "With my very first!"
- They walked in silence round the edge of the lake, and holed out. One
- putt was enough for each, and they halved the hole with a two. Peter's
- previous record was eight, and James had once done a seven. There are
- times when strong men lose their self-control, and this was one of
- them. They reached the third tee in a daze, and it was here that
- mortification began to set in.
- The third hole is another bogey four, up the hill and past the tree
- that serves as a direction-post, the hole itself being out of sight. On
- his day, James had often done it in ten and Peter in nine; but now they
- were unnerved. James, who had the honour, shook visibly as he addressed
- his ball. Three times he swung and only connected with the ozone; the
- fourth time he topped badly. The discs had been set back a little way,
- and James had the mournful distinction of breaking a record for the
- course by playing his fifth shot from the tee. It was a low, raking
- brassey-shot, which carried a heap of stones twenty feet to the right
- and finished in a furrow. Peter, meanwhile, had popped up a lofty ball
- which came to rest behind a stone.
- It was now that the rigid rules governing this contest began to take
- their toll. Had they been playing an ordinary friendly round, each
- would have teed up on some convenient hillock and probably been past
- the tree with their second, for James would, in ordinary circumstances,
- have taken his drive back and regarded the strokes he had made as a
- little preliminary practice to get him into midseason form. But today
- it was war to the niblick, and neither man asked nor expected quarter.
- Peter's seventh shot dislodged the stone, leaving him a clear field,
- and James, with his eleventh, extricated himself from the furrow. Fifty
- feet from the tree James was eighteen, Peter twelve; but then the
- latter, as every golfer does at times, suddenly went right off his
- game. He hit the tree four times, then hooked into the sand-bunkers to
- the left of the hole. James, who had been playing a game that was
- steady without being brilliant, was on the green in twenty-six, Peter
- taking twenty-seven. Poor putting lost James the hole. Peter was down
- in thirty-three, but the pace was too hot for James. He missed a
- two-foot putt for the half, and they went to the fourth tee all square.
- The fourth hole follows the curve of the road, on the other side of
- which are picturesque woods. It presents no difficulties to the expert,
- but it has pitfalls for the novice. The dashing player stands for a
- slice, while the more cautious are satisfied if they can clear the
- bunker that spans the fairway and lay their ball well out to the left,
- whence an iron shot will take them to the green. Peter and James
- combined the two policies. Peter aimed to the left and got a slice, and
- James, also aiming to the left, topped into the bunker. Peter,
- realizing from experience the futility of searching for his ball in the
- woods, drove a second, which also disappeared into the jungle, as did
- his third. By the time he had joined James in the bunker he had played
- his sixth.
- It is the glorious uncertainty of golf that makes it the game it is.
- The fact that James and Peter, lying side by side in the same bunker,
- had played respectively one and six shots, might have induced an
- unthinking observer to fancy the chances of the former. And no doubt,
- had he not taken seven strokes to extricate himself from the pit, while
- his opponent, by some act of God, contrived to get out in two, James's
- chances might have been extremely rosy. As it was, the two men
- staggered out on to the fairway again with a score of eight apiece.
- Once past the bunker and round the bend of the road, the hole becomes
- simple. A judicious use of the cleek put Peter on the green in
- fourteen, while James, with a Braid iron, reached it in twelve. Peter
- was down in seventeen, and James contrived to halve. It was only as he
- was leaving the hole that the latter discovered that he had been
- putting with his niblick, which cannot have failed to exercise a
- prejudicial effect on his game. These little incidents are bound to
- happen when one is in a nervous and highly-strung condition.
- The fifth and sixth holes produced no unusual features. Peter won the
- fifth in eleven, and James the sixth in ten. The short seventh they
- halved in nine. The eighth, always a tricky hole, they took no
- liberties with, James, sinking a long putt with his twenty-third, just
- managing to halve. A ding-dong race up the hill for the ninth found
- James first at the pin, and they finished the first nine with James one
- up.
- As they left the green James looked a little furtively at his
- companion.
- "You might be strolling on to the tenth," he said. "I want to get a few
- balls at the shop. And my mashie wants fixing up. I sha'n't be long."
- "I'll come with you," said Peter.
- "Don't bother," said James. "You go on and hold our place at the tee."
- I regret to say that James was lying. His mashie was in excellent
- repair, and he still had a dozen balls in his bag, it being his prudent
- practice always to start out with eighteen. No! What he had said was
- mere subterfuge. He wanted to go to his locker and snatch a few minutes
- with Sandy MacBean's "How to Become a Scratch Man". He felt sure that
- one more glance at the photograph of Mr. MacBean driving would give him
- the mastery of the stroke and so enable him to win the match. In this I
- think he was a little sanguine. The difficulty about Sandy MacBean's
- method of tuition was that he laid great stress on the fact that the
- ball should be directly in a line with a point exactly in the centre of
- the back of the player's neck; and so far James's efforts to keep his
- eye on the ball and on the back of his neck simultaneously had produced
- no satisfactory results.
- * * * * *
- It seemed to James, when he joined Peter on the tenth tee, that the
- latter's manner was strange. He was pale. There was a curious look in
- his eye.
- "James, old man," he said.
- "Yes?" said James.
- "While you were away I have been thinking. James, old man, do you
- really love this girl?"
- James stared. A spasm of pain twisted Peter's face.
- "Suppose," he said in a low voice, "she were not all you--we--think she
- is!"
- "What do you mean?"
- "Nothing, nothing."
- "Miss Forrester is an angel."
- "Yes, yes. Quite so."
- "I know what it is," said James, passionately. "You're trying to put me
- off my stroke. You know that the least thing makes me lose my form."
- "No, no!"
- "You hope that you can take my mind off the game and make me go to
- pieces, and then you'll win the match."
- "On the contrary," said Peter. "I intend to forfeit the match."
- James reeled.
- "What!"
- "I give up."
- "But--but----" James shook with emotion. His voice quavered. "Ah!" he
- cried. "I see now: I understand! You are doing this for me because I am
- your pal. Peter, this is noble! This is the sort of thing you read
- about in books. I've seen it in the movies. But I can't accept the
- sacrifice."
- "You must!"
- "No, no!"
- "I insist!"
- "Do you mean this?"
- "I give her up, James, old man. I--I hope you will be happy."
- "But I don't know what to say. How can I thank you?"
- "Don't thank me."
- "But, Peter, do you fully realize what you are doing? True, I am one
- up, but there are nine holes to go, and I am not right on my game
- today. You might easily beat me. Have you forgotten that I once took
- forty-seven at the dog-leg hole? This may be one of my bad days. Do you
- understand that if you insist on giving up I shall go to Miss Forrester
- tonight and propose to her?"
- "I understand."
- "And yet you stick to it that you are through?"
- "I do. And, by the way, there's no need for you to wait till tonight.
- I saw Miss Forrester just now outside the tennis court. She's alone."
- James turned crimson.
- "Then I think perhaps----"
- "You'd better go to her at once."
- "I will." James extended his hand. "Peter, old man, I shall never
- forget this."
- "That's all right."
- "What are you going to do?"
- "Now, do you mean? Oh, I shall potter round the second nine. If you
- want me, you'll find me somewhere about."
- "You'll come to the wedding, Peter?" said James, wistfully.
- "Of course," said Peter. "Good luck."
- He spoke cheerily, but, when the other had turned to go, he stood
- looking after him thoughtfully. Then he sighed a heavy sigh.
- * * * * *
- James approached Miss Forrester with a beating heart. She made a
- charming picture as she stood there in the sunlight, one hand on her
- hip, the other swaying a tennis racket.
- "How do you do?" said James.
- "How are you, Mr. Todd? Have you been playing golf?"
- "Yes."
- "With Mr. Willard?"
- "Yes. We were having a match."
- "Golf," said Grace Forrester, "seems to make men very rude. Mr. Willard
- left me without a word in the middle of our conversation."
- James was astonished.
- "Were you talking to Peter?"
- "Yes. Just now. I can't understand what was the matter with him. He
- just turned on his heel and swung off."
- "You oughtn't to turn on your heel when you swing," said James; "only
- on the ball of the foot."
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "Nothing, nothing. I wasn't thinking. The fact is, I've something on my
- mind. So has Peter. You mustn't think too hardly of him. We have been
- playing an important match, and it must have got on his nerves. You
- didn't happen by any chance to be watching us?"
- "No."
- "Ah! I wish you had seen me at the lake-hole. I did it one under par."
- "Was your father playing?"
- "You don't understand. I mean I did it in one better than even the
- finest player is supposed to do it. It's a mashie-shot, you know. You
- mustn't play too light, or you fall in the lake; and you mustn't play
- it too hard, or you go past the hole into the woods. It requires the
- nicest delicacy and judgment, such as I gave it. You might have to wait
- a year before seeing anyone do it in two again. I doubt if the 'pro.'
- often does it in two. Now, directly we came to this hole today, I made
- up my mind that there was going to be no mistake. The great secret of
- any shot at golf is ease, elegance, and the ability to relax. The
- majority of men, you will find, think it important that their address
- should be good."
- "How snobbish! What does it matter where a man lives?"
- "You don't absolutely follow me. I refer to the waggle and the stance
- before you make the stroke. Most players seem to fix in their minds the
- appearance of the angles which are presented by the position of the
- arms, legs, and club shaft, and it is largely the desire to retain
- these angles which results in their moving their heads and stiffening
- their muscles so that there is no freedom in the swing. There is only
- one point which vitally affects the stroke, and the only reason why
- that should be kept constant is that you are enabled to see your ball
- clearly. That is the pivotal point marked at the base of the neck, and
- a line drawn from this point to the ball should be at right angles to
- the line of flight."
- James paused for a moment for air, and as he paused Miss Forrester
- spoke.
- "This is all gibberish to me," she said.
- "Gibberish!" gasped James. "I am quoting verbatim from one of the best
- authorities on golf."
- Miss Forrester swung her tennis racket irritably.
- "Golf," she said, "bores me pallid. I think it is the silliest game
- ever invented!"
- The trouble about telling a story is that words are so feeble a means
- of depicting the supreme moments of life. That is where the artist has
- the advantage over the historian. Were I an artist, I should show James
- at this point falling backwards with his feet together and his eyes
- shut, with a semi-circular dotted line marking the progress of his
- flight and a few stars above his head to indicate moral collapse. There
- are no words that can adequately describe the sheer, black horror that
- froze the blood in his veins as this frightful speech smote his ears.
- He had never inquired into Miss Forrester's religious views before, but
- he had always assumed that they were sound. And now here she was
- polluting the golden summer air with the most hideous blasphemy. It
- would be incorrect to say that James's love was turned to hate. He did
- not hate Grace. The repulsion he felt was deeper than mere hate. What
- he felt was not altogether loathing and not wholly pity. It was a blend
- of the two.
- There was a tense silence. The listening world stood still. Then,
- without a word, James Todd turned and tottered away.
- * * * * *
- Peter was working moodily in the twelfth bunker when his friend
- arrived. He looked up with a start. Then, seeing that the other was
- alone, he came forward hesitatingly.
- "Am I to congratulate you?"
- James breathed a deep breath.
- "You are!" he said. "On an escape!"
- "She refused you?"
- "She didn't get the chance. Old man, have you ever sent one right up
- the edge of that bunker in front of the seventh and just not gone in?"
- "Very rarely."
- "I did once. It was my second shot, from a good lie, with the light
- iron, and I followed well through and thought I had gone just too far,
- and, when I walked up, there was my ball on the edge of the bunker,
- nicely teed up on a chunk of grass, so that I was able to lay it dead
- with my mashie-niblick, holing out in six. Well, what I mean to say is,
- I feel now as I felt then--as if some unseen power had withheld me in
- time from some frightful disaster."
- "I know just how you feel," said Peter, gravely.
- "Peter, old man, that girl said golf bored her pallid. She said she
- thought it was the silliest game ever invented." He paused to mark the
- effect of his words. Peter merely smiled a faint, wan smile. "You don't
- seem revolted," said James.
- "I am revolted, but not surprised. You see, she said the same thing to
- me only a few minutes before."
- "She did!"
- "It amounted to the same thing. I had just been telling her how I did
- the lake-hole today in two, and she said that in her opinion golf was a
- game for children with water on the brain who weren't athletic enough
- to play Animal Grab."
- The two men shivered in sympathy.
- "There must be insanity in the family," said James at last.
- "That," said Peter, "is the charitable explanation."
- "We were fortunate to find it out in time."
- "We were!"
- "We mustn't run a risk like that again."
- "Never again!"
- "I think we had better take up golf really seriously. It will keep us
- out of mischief."
- "You're quite right. We ought to do our four rounds a day regularly."
- "In spring, summer, and autumn. And in winter it would be rash not to
- practise most of the day at one of those indoor schools."
- "We ought to be safe that way."
- "Peter, old man," said James, "I've been meaning to speak to you about
- it for some time. I've got Sandy MacBean's new book, and I think you
- ought to read it. It is full of helpful hints."
- "James!"
- "Peter!"
- Silently the two men clasped hands. James Todd and Peter Willard were
- themselves again.
- * * * * *
- And so (said the Oldest Member) we come back to our original
- starting-point--to wit, that, while there is nothing to be said
- definitely against love, your golfer should be extremely careful how he
- indulges in it. It may improve his game or it may not. But, if he finds
- that there is any danger that it may not--if the object of his
- affections is not the kind of girl who will listen to him with cheerful
- sympathy through the long evenings, while he tells her, illustrating
- stance and grip and swing with the kitchen poker, each detail of the
- day's round--then, I say unhesitatingly, he had better leave it alone.
- Love has had a lot of press-agenting from the oldest times; but there
- are higher, nobler things than love. A woman is only a woman, but a
- hefty drive is a slosh.
- 3
- _A Mixed Threesome_
- It was the holiday season, and during the holidays the Greens
- Committees have decided that the payment of twenty guineas shall
- entitle fathers of families not only to infest the course themselves,
- but also to decant their nearest and dearest upon it in whatever
- quantity they please. All over the links, in consequence, happy,
- laughing groups of children had broken out like a rash. A wan-faced
- adult, who had been held up for ten minutes while a drove of issue
- quarrelled over whether little Claude had taken two hundred or two
- hundred and twenty approach shots to reach the ninth green sank into a
- seat beside the Oldest Member.
- "What luck?" inquired the Sage.
- "None to speak of," returned the other, moodily. "I thought I had
- bagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but he
- ducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling their
- hoops in the road. Golf is a game for grownups. How can a fellow play,
- with a platoon of progeny blocking him at every hole?"
- The Oldest Member shook his head. He could not subscribe to these
- sentiments.
- No doubt (said the Oldest Member) the summer golf-child is, from the
- point of view of the player who likes to get round the course in a
- single afternoon, something of a trial; but, personally, I confess, it
- pleases me to see my fellow human beings--and into this category
- golf-children, though at the moment you may not be broad-minded enough
- to admit it, undoubtedly fall--taking to the noblest of games at an
- early age. Golf, like measles, should be caught young, for, if
- postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. Let me tell you
- the story of Mortimer Sturgis, which illustrates what I mean rather
- aptly.
- Mortimer Sturgis, when I first knew him, was a care-free man of
- thirty-eight, of amiable character and independent means, which he
- increased from time to time by judicious ventures on the Stock
- Exchange. Although he had never played golf, his had not been
- altogether an ill-spent life. He swung a creditable racket at tennis,
- was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, and
- gave freely to the poor. He was what you might call a golden-mean man,
- good-hearted rather than magnetic, with no serious vices and no heroic
- virtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelain
- vases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl of
- twenty-five, a lifelong friend of mine.
- I like Mortimer. Everybody liked him. But, at the same time, I was a
- little surprised that a girl like Betty should have become engaged to
- him. As I said before, he was not magnetic; and magnetism, I thought,
- was the chief quality she would have demanded in a man. Betty was one
- of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for
- hero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in the
- nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her
- ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where
- the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights
- and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has
- to take the best she can get. I must admit that Betty seemed perfectly
- content with Mortimer.
- Such, then, was the state of affairs when Eddie Denton arrived, and the
- trouble began.
- I was escorting Betty home one evening after a tea-party at which we
- had been fellow-guests, when, walking down the road, we happened to
- espy Mortimer. He broke into a run when he saw us, and galloped up,
- waving a piece of paper in his hand. He was plainly excited, a thing
- which was unusual in this well-balanced man. His broad, good-humoured
- face was working violently.
- "Good news!" he cried. "Good news! Dear old Eddie's back!"
- "Oh, how nice for you, dear!" said Betty. "Eddie Denton is Mortimer's
- best friend," she explained to me. "He has told me so much about him. I
- have been looking forward to his coming home. Mortie thinks the world
- of him."
- "So will you, when you know him," cried Mortimer. "Dear old Eddie! He's
- a wonder! The best fellow on earth! We were at school and the 'Varsity
- together. There's nobody like Eddie! He landed yesterday. Just home
- from Central Africa. He's an explorer, you know," he said to me.
- "Spends all his time in places where it's death for a white man to go."
- "An explorer!" I heard Betty breathe, as if to herself. I was not so
- impressed, I fear, as she was. Explorers, as a matter of fact, leave me
- a trifle cold. It has always seemed to me that the difficulties of
- their life are greatly exaggerated--generally by themselves. In a large
- country like Africa, for instance, I should imagine that it was almost
- impossible for a man not to get somewhere if he goes on long enough.
- Give _me_ the fellow who can plunge into the bowels of the earth
- at Piccadilly Circus and find the right Tube train with nothing but a
- lot of misleading signs to guide him. However, we are not all
- constituted alike in this world, and it was apparent from the flush on
- her cheek and the light in her eyes that Betty admired explorers.
- "I wired to him at once," went on Mortimer, "and insisted on his coming
- down here. It's two years since I saw him. You don't know how I have
- looked forward, dear, to you and Eddie meeting. He is just your sort. I
- know how romantic you are and keen on adventure and all that. Well,
- you should hear Eddie tell the story of how he brought down the
- bull _bongo_ with his last cartridge after all the _pongos_, or
- native bearers, had fled into the _dongo_, or undergrowth."
- "I should love to!" whispered Betty, her eyes glowing. I suppose to an
- impressionable girl these things really are of absorbing interest. For
- myself, _bongos_ intrigue me even less than _pongos_, while
- _dongos_ frankly bore me. "When do you expect him?"
- "He will get my wire tonight. I'm hoping we shall see the dear old
- fellow tomorrow afternoon some time. How surprised old Eddie will be to
- hear that I'm engaged. He's such a confirmed bachelor himself. He told
- me once that he considered the wisest thing ever said by human tongue
- was the Swahili proverb--'Whoso taketh a woman into his kraal
- depositeth himself straightway in the _wongo_.' _Wongo_, he
- tells me, is a sort of broth composed of herbs and meat-bones,
- corresponding to our soup. You must get Eddie to give it you in the
- original Swahili. It sounds even better."
- I saw the girl's eyes flash, and there came into her face that peculiar
- set expression which married men know. It passed in an instant, but not
- before it had given me material for thought which lasted me all the way
- to my house and into the silent watches of the night. I was fond of
- Mortimer Sturgis, and I could see trouble ahead for him as plainly as
- though I had been a palmist reading his hand at two guineas a visit.
- There are other proverbs fully as wise as the one which Mortimer had
- translated from the Swahili, and one of the wisest is that quaint old
- East London saying, handed down from one generation of costermongers to
- another, and whispered at midnight in the wigwams of the whelk-seller!
- "Never introduce your donah to a pal." In those seven words is
- contained the wisdom of the ages. I could read the future so plainly.
- What but one thing could happen after Mortimer had influenced Betty's
- imagination with his stories of his friend's romantic career, and added
- the finishing touch by advertising him as a woman-hater? He might just
- as well have asked for his ring back at once. My heart bled for
- Mortimer.
- * * * *
- I happened to call at his house on the second evening of the explorer's
- visit, and already the mischief had been done.
- Denton was one of those lean, hard-bitten men with smouldering eyes and
- a brick-red complexion. He looked what he was, the man of action and
- enterprise. He had the wiry frame and strong jaw without which no
- explorer is complete, and Mortimer, beside him, seemed but a poor, soft
- product of our hot-house civilization. Mortimer, I forgot to say, wore
- glasses; and, if there is one time more than another when a man should
- not wear glasses, it is while a strong-faced, keen-eyed wanderer in the
- wilds is telling a beautiful girl the story of his adventures.
- For this was what Denton was doing. My arrival seemed to have
- interrupted him in the middle of narrative. He shook my hand in a
- strong, silent sort of way, and resumed:
- "Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay the
- night."
- I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If
- you do, he always decides to stay the night.
- "In the morning they took me down to the river. At this point it widens
- into a _kongo_, or pool, and it was here, they told me, that the
- crocodile mostly lived, subsisting on the native oxen--the short-horned
- _jongos_--which, swept away by the current while crossing the ford
- above, were carried down on the _longos_, or rapids. It was not,
- however, till the second evening that I managed to catch sight of his
- ugly snout above the surface. I waited around, and on the third day I
- saw him suddenly come out of the water and heave his whole length on to
- a sandbank in mid-stream and go to sleep in the sun. He was certainly a
- monster--fully thirty--you have never been in Central Africa, have you,
- Miss Weston? No? You ought to go there!--fully fifty feet from tip to
- tail. There he lay, glistening. I shall never forget the sight."
- He broke off to light a cigarette. I heard Betty draw in her breath
- sharply. Mortimer was beaming through his glasses with the air of the
- owner of a dog which is astonishing a drawing-room with its clever
- tricks.
- "And what did you do then, Mr. Denton?" asked Betty, breathlessly.
- "Yes, what did you do then, old chap?" said Mortimer.
- Denton blew out the match and dropped it on the ash-tray.
- "Eh? Oh," he said, carelessly, "I swam across and shot him."
- "Swam across and shot him!"
- "Yes. It seemed to me that the chance was too good to be missed. Of
- course, I might have had a pot at him from the bank, but the chances
- were I wouldn't have hit him in a vital place. So I swam across to the
- sandbank, put the muzzle of my gun in his mouth, and pulled the
- trigger. I have rarely seen a crocodile so taken aback."
- "But how dreadfully dangerous!"
- "Oh, danger!" Eddie Denton laughed lightly. "One drops into the habit
- of taking a few risks out there, you know. Talking of _danger_,
- the time when things really did look a little nasty was when the
- wounded _gongo_ cornered me in a narrow _tongo_ and I only had
- a pocket-knife with everything in it broken except the corkscrew
- and the thing for taking stones out of horses' hoofs. It was like
- this----"
- I could bear no more. I am a tender-hearted man, and I made some excuse
- and got away. From the expression on the girl's face I could see that
- it was only a question of days before she gave her heart to this
- romantic newcomer.
- * * * * *
- As a matter of fact, it was on the following afternoon that she called
- on me and told me that the worst had happened. I had known her from a
- child, you understand, and she always confided her troubles to me.
- "I want your advice," she began. "I'm so wretched!"
- She burst into tears. I could see the poor girl was in a highly nervous
- condition, so I did my best to calm her by describing how I had once
- done the long hole in four. My friends tell me that there is no finer
- soporific, and it seemed as though they may be right, for presently,
- just as I had reached the point where I laid my approach-putt dead from
- a distance of fifteen feet, she became quieter. She dried her eyes,
- yawned once or twice, and looked at me bravely.
- "I love Eddie Denton!" she said.
- "I feared as much. When did you feel this coming on?"
- "It crashed on me like a thunderbolt last night after dinner. We were
- walking in the garden, and he was just telling me how he had been
- bitten by a poisonous _zongo_, when I seemed to go all giddy. When
- I came to myself I was in Eddie's arms. His face was pressed against
- mine, and he was gargling."
- "Gargling?"
- "I thought so at first. But he reassured me. He was merely speaking in
- one of the lesser-known dialects of the Walla-Walla natives of Eastern
- Uganda, into which he always drops in moments of great emotion. He soon
- recovered sufficiently to give me a rough translation, and then I knew
- that he loved me. He kissed me. I kissed him. We kissed each other."
- "And where was Mortimer all this while?"
- "Indoors, cataloguing his collection of vases."
- For a moment, I confess, I was inclined to abandon Mortimer's cause. A
- man, I felt, who could stay indoors cataloguing vases while his
- _fiancee_ wandered in the moonlight with explorers deserved all
- that was coming to him. I overcame the feeling.
- "Have you told him?"
- "Of course not."
- "You don't think it might be of interest to him?"
- "How can I tell him? It would break his heart. I am awfully fond of
- Mortimer. So is Eddie. We would both die rather than do anything to
- hurt him. Eddie is the soul of honour. He agrees with me that Mortimer
- must never know."
- "Then you aren't going to break off your engagement?"
- "I couldn't. Eddie feels the same. He says that, unless something can
- be done, he will say good-bye to me and creep far, far away to some
- distant desert, and there, in the great stillness, broken only by the
- cry of the prowling _yongo_, try to forget."
- "When you say 'unless something can be done,' what do you mean? What
- can be done?"
- "I thought you might have something to suggest. Don't you think it
- possible that somehow Mortimer might take it into his head to break the
- engagement himself?"
- "Absurd! He loves you devotedly."
- "I'm afraid so. Only the other day I dropped one of his best vases, and
- he just smiled and said it didn't matter."
- "I can give you even better proof than that. This morning Mortimer came
- to me and asked me to give him secret lessons in golf."
- "Golf! But he despises golf."
- "Exactly. But he is going to learn it for your sake."
- "But why secret lessons?"
- "Because he wants to keep it a surprise for your birthday. Now can you
- doubt his love?"
- "I am not worthy of him!" she whispered.
- The words gave me an idea.
- "Suppose," I said, "we could convince Mortimer of that!"
- "I don't understand."
- "Suppose, for instance, he could be made to believe that you were, let
- us say, a dipsomaniac."
- She shook her head. "He knows that already."
- "What!"
- "Yes; I told him I sometimes walked in my sleep."
- "I mean a secret drinker."
- "Nothing will induce me to pretend to be a secret drinker."
- "Then a drug-fiend?" I suggested, hopefully.
- "I hate medicine."
- "I have it!" I said. "A kleptomaniac."
- "What is that?"
- "A person who steals things."
- "Oh, that's horrid."
- "Not at all. It's a perfectly ladylike thing to do. You don't know you
- do it."
- "But, if I don't know I do it, how do I know I do it?"
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "I mean, how can I tell Mortimer I do it if I don't know?"
- "You don't tell him. I will tell him. I will inform him tomorrow that
- you called on me this afternoon and stole my watch and"--I glanced
- about the room--"my silver matchbox."
- "I'd rather have that little vinaigrette."
- "You don't get either. I merely say you stole it. What will happen?"
- "Mortimer will hit you with a cleek."
- "Not at all. I am an old man. My white hairs protect me. What he will
- do is to insist on confronting me with you and asking you to deny the
- foul charge."
- "And then?"
- "Then you admit it and release him from his engagement."
- She sat for a while in silence. I could see that my words had made an
- impression.
- "I think it's a splendid idea. Thank you very much." She rose and moved
- to the door. "I knew you would suggest something wonderful." She
- hesitated. "You don't think it would make it sound more plausible if I
- really took the vinaigrette?" she added, a little wistfully.
- "It would spoil everything," I replied, firmly, as I reached for the
- vinaigrette and locked it carefully in my desk.
- She was silent for a moment, and her glance fell on the carpet. That,
- however, did not worry me. It was nailed down.
- "Well, good-bye," she said.
- "_Au revoir_," I replied. "I am meeting Mortimer at six-thirty
- tomorrow. You may expect us round at your house at about eight."
- * * * * *
- Mortimer was punctual at the tryst next morning. When I reached the
- tenth tee he was already there. We exchanged a brief greeting and I
- handed him a driver, outlined the essentials of grip and swing, and
- bade him go to it.
- "It seems a simple game," he said, as he took his stance. "You're sure
- it's fair to have the ball sitting up on top of a young sand-hill like
- this?"
- "Perfectly fair."
- "I mean, I don't want to be coddled because I'm a beginner."
- "The ball is always teed up for the drive," I assured him.
- "Oh, well, if you say so. But it seems to me to take all the element of
- sport out of the game. Where do I hit it?"
- "Oh, straight ahead."
- "But isn't it dangerous? I mean, suppose I smash a window in that house
- over there?"
- He indicated a charming bijou residence some five hundred yards down
- the fairway.
- "In that case," I replied, "the owner comes out in his pyjamas and
- offers you the choice between some nuts and a cigar."
- He seemed reassured, and began to address the ball. Then he paused
- again.
- "Isn't there something you say before you start?" he asked. "'Five', or
- something?"
- "You may say 'Fore!' if it makes you feel any easier. But it isn't
- necessary."
- "If I am going to learn this silly game," said Mortimer, firmly, "I am
- going to learn it _right_. Fore!"
- I watched him curiously. I never put a club into the hand of a beginner
- without something of the feeling of the sculptor who surveys a mass of
- shapeless clay. I experience the emotions of a creator. Here, I say to
- myself, is a semi-sentient being into whose soulless carcass I am
- breathing life. A moment before, he was, though technically living, a
- mere clod. A moment hence he will be a golfer.
- While I was still occupied with these meditations Mortimer swung at the
- ball. The club, whizzing down, brushed the surface of the rubber
- sphere, toppling it off the tee and propelling it six inches with a
- slight slice on it.
- "Damnation!" said Mortimer, unravelling himself.
- I nodded approvingly. His drive had not been anything to write to the
- golfing journals about, but he was picking up the technique of the
- game.
- "What happened then?"
- I told him in a word.
- "Your stance was wrong, and your grip was wrong, and you moved your
- head, and swayed your body, and took your eye off the ball, and
- pressed, and forgot to use your wrists, and swung back too fast, and
- let the hands get ahead of the club, and lost your balance, and omitted
- to pivot on the ball of the left foot, and bent your right knee."
- He was silent for a moment.
- "There is more in this pastime," he said, "than the casual observer
- would suspect."
- I have noticed, and I suppose other people have noticed, that in the
- golf education of every man there is a definite point at which he may
- be said to have crossed the dividing line--the Rubicon, as it
- were--that separates the golfer from the non-golfer. This moment comes
- immediately after his first good drive. In the ninety minutes in which
- I instructed Mortimer Sturgis that morning in the rudiments of the
- game, he made every variety of drive known to science; but it was not
- till we were about to leave that he made a good one.
- A moment before he had surveyed his blistered hands with sombre
- disgust.
- "It's no good," he said. "I shall never learn this beast of a game. And
- I don't want to either. It's only fit for lunatics. Where's the sense
- in it? Hitting a rotten little ball with a stick! If I want exercise,
- I'll take a stick and go and rattle it along the railings. There's
- something _in_ that! Well, let's be getting along. No good wasting
- the whole morning out here."
- "Try one more drive, and then we'll go."
- "All right. If you like. No sense in it, though."
- He teed up the ball, took a careless stance, and flicked moodily. There
- was a sharp crack, the ball shot off the tee, flew a hundred yards in a
- dead straight line never ten feet above the ground, soared another
- seventy yards in a graceful arc, struck the turf, rolled, and came to
- rest within easy mashie distance of the green.
- "Splendid!" I cried.
- The man seemed stunned.
- "How did that happen?"
- I told him very simply.
- "Your stance was right, and your grip was right, and you kept your head
- still, and didn't sway your body, and never took your eye off the ball,
- and slowed back, and let the arms come well through, and rolled the
- wrists, and let the club-head lead, and kept your balance, and pivoted
- on the ball of the left foot, and didn't duck the right knee."
- "I see," he said. "Yes, I thought that must be it."
- "Now let's go home."
- "Wait a minute. I just want to remember what I did while it's fresh in
- my mind. Let me see, this was the way I stood. Or was it more like
- this? No, like this." He turned to me, beaming. "What a great idea it
- was, my taking up golf! It's all nonsense what you read in the comic
- papers about people foozling all over the place and breaking clubs and
- all that. You've only to exercise a little reasonable care. And what a
- corking game it is! Nothing like it in the world! I wonder if Betty is
- up yet. I must go round and show her how I did that drive. A perfect
- swing, with every ounce of weight, wrist, and muscle behind it. I meant
- to keep it a secret from the dear girl till I had really learned, but
- of course I _have_ learned now. Let's go round and rout her out."
- He had given me my cue. I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke
- sorrowfully.
- "Mortimer, my boy, I fear I have bad news for you."
- "Slow; back--keep the head---- What's that? Bad news?"
- "About Betty."
- "About Betty? What about her? Don't sway the body--keep the eye on
- the----"
- "Prepare yourself for a shock, my boy. Yesterday afternoon Betty called
- to see me. When she had gone I found that she had stolen my silver
- matchbox."
- "Stolen your matchbox?"
- "Stolen my matchbox."
- "Oh, well, I dare say there were faults on both sides," said Mortimer.
- "Tell me if I sway my body this time."
- "You don't grasp what I have said! Do you realize that Betty, the girl
- you are going to marry, is a kleptomaniac?"
- "A kleptomaniac!"
- "That is the only possible explanation. Think what this means, my boy.
- Think how you will feel every time your wife says she is going out to
- do a little shopping! Think of yourself, left alone at home, watching
- the clock, saying to yourself, 'Now she is lifting a pair of silk
- stockings!' 'Now she is hiding gloves in her umbrella!' 'Just about
- this moment she is getting away with a pearl necklace!'"
- "Would she do that?"
- "She would! She could not help herself. Or, rather, she could not
- refrain from helping herself. How about it, my boy?"
- "It only draws us closer together," he said.
- I was touched, I own. My scheme had failed, but it had proved Mortimer
- Sturgis to be of pure gold. He stood gazing down the fairway, wrapped
- in thought.
- "By the way," he said, meditatively, "I wonder if the dear girl ever
- goes to any of those sales--those auction-sales, you know, where you're
- allowed to inspect the things the day before? They often have some
- pretty decent vases."
- He broke off and fell into a reverie.
- * * * * *
- From this point onward Mortimer Sturgis proved the truth of what I said
- to you about the perils of taking up golf at an advanced age. A
- lifetime of observing my fellow-creatures has convinced me that Nature
- intended us all to be golfers. In every human being the germ of golf is
- implanted at birth, and suppression causes it to grow and grow till--it
- may be at forty, fifty, sixty--it suddenly bursts its bonds and sweeps
- over the victim like a tidal wave. The wise man, who begins to play in
- childhood, is enabled to let the poison exude gradually from his
- system, with no harmful results. But a man like Mortimer Sturgis, with
- thirty-eight golfless years behind him, is swept off his feet. He is
- carried away. He loses all sense of proportion. He is like the fly that
- happens to be sitting on the wall of the dam just when the crack comes.
- Mortimer Sturgis gave himself up without a struggle to an orgy of golf
- such as I have never witnessed in any man. Within two days of that
- first lesson he had accumulated a collection of clubs large enough to
- have enabled him to open a shop; and he went on buying them at the rate
- of two and three a day. On Sundays, when it was impossible to buy
- clubs, he was like a lost spirit. True, he would do his regular four
- rounds on the day of rest, but he never felt happy. The thought, as he
- sliced into the rough, that the patent wooden-faced cleek which he
- intended to purchase next morning might have made all the difference,
- completely spoiled his enjoyment.
- I remember him calling me up on the telephone at three o'clock one
- morning to tell me that he had solved the problem of putting. He
- intended in future, he said, to use a croquet mallet, and he wondered
- that no one had ever thought of it before. The sound of his broken
- groan when I informed him that croquet mallets were against the rules
- haunted me for days.
- His golf library kept pace with his collection of clubs. He bought all
- the standard works, subscribed to all the golfing papers, and, when he
- came across a paragraph in a magazine to the effect that Mr. Hutchings,
- an ex-amateur champion, did not begin to play till he was past forty,
- and that his opponent in the final, Mr. S. H. Fry, had never held a club
- till his thirty-fifth year, he had it engraved on vellum and framed and
- hung up beside his shaving-mirror.
- * * * * *
- And Betty, meanwhile? She, poor child, stared down the years into a
- bleak future, in which she saw herself parted for ever from the man she
- loved, and the golf-widow of another for whom--even when he won a medal
- for lowest net at a weekly handicap with a score of a hundred and three
- minus twenty-four--she could feel nothing warmer than respect. Those
- were dreary days for Betty. We three--she and I and Eddie Denton--often
- talked over Mortimer's strange obsession. Denton said that, except that
- Mortimer had not come out in pink spots, his symptoms were almost
- identical with those of the dreaded _mongo-mongo_, the scourge of
- the West African hinterland. Poor Denton! He had already booked his
- passage for Africa, and spent hours looking in the atlas for good
- deserts.
- In every fever of human affairs there comes at last the crisis. We may
- emerge from it healed or we may plunge into still deeper depths of
- soul-sickness; but always the crisis comes. I was privileged to be
- present when it came in the affairs of Mortimer Sturgis and Betty
- Weston.
- I had gone into the club-house one afternoon at an hour when it is
- usually empty, and the first thing I saw, as I entered the main room,
- which looks out on the ninth green, was Mortimer. He was grovelling on
- the floor, and I confess that, when I caught sight of him, my heart
- stood still. I feared that his reason, sapped by dissipation, had given
- way. I knew that for weeks, day in and day out, the niblick had hardly
- ever been out of his hand, and no constitution can stand that.
- He looked up as he heard my footstep.
- "Hallo," he said. "Can you see a ball anywhere?"
- "A ball?" I backed away, reaching for the door-handle. "My dear boy," I
- said, soothingly, "you have made a mistake. Quite a natural mistake.
- One anybody would have made. But, as a matter of fact, this is the
- club-house. The links are outside there. Why not come away with me very
- quietly and let us see if we can't find some balls on the links? If you
- will wait here a moment, I will call up Doctor Smithson. He was telling
- me only this morning that he wanted a good spell of ball-hunting to put
- him in shape. You don't mind if he joins us?"
- "It was a Silver King with my initials on it," Mortimer went on, not
- heeding me. "I got on the ninth green in eleven with a nice
- mashie-niblick, but my approach-putt was a little too strong. It came
- in through that window."
- I perceived for the first time that one of the windows facing the
- course was broken, and my relief was great. I went down on my knees and
- helped him in his search. We ran the ball to earth finally inside the
- piano.
- "What's the local rule?" inquired Mortimer. "Must I play it where it
- lies, or may I tee up and lose a stroke? If I have to play it where it
- lies, I suppose a niblick would be the club?"
- It was at this moment that Betty came in. One glance at her pale, set
- face told me that there was to be a scene, and I would have retired,
- but that she was between me and the door.
- "Hallo, dear," said Mortimer, greeting her with a friendly waggle of
- his niblick. "I'm bunkered in the piano. My approach-putt was a little
- strong, and I over-ran the green."
- "Mortimer," said the girl, tensely, "I want to ask you one question."
- "Yes, dear? I wish, darling, you could have seen my drive at the eighth
- just now. It was a pip!"
- Betty looked at him steadily.
- "Are we engaged," she said, "or are we not?"
- "Engaged? Oh, to be married? Why, of course. I tried the open stance
- for a change, and----"
- "This morning you promised to take me for a ride. You never appeared.
- Where were you?"
- "Just playing golf."
- "Golf! I'm sick of the very name!"
- A spasm shook Mortimer.
- "You mustn't let people hear you saying things like that!" he said. "I
- somehow felt, the moment I began my up-swing, that everything was going
- to be all right. I----"
- "I'll give you one more chance. Will you take me for a drive in your
- car this evening?"
- "I can't."
- "Why not? What are you doing?"
- "Just playing golf!"
- "I'm tired of being neglected like this!" cried Betty, stamping her
- foot. Poor girl, I saw her point of view. It was bad enough for her
- being engaged to the wrong man, without having him treat her as a mere
- acquaintance. Her conscience fighting with her love for Eddie Denton
- had kept her true to Mortimer, and Mortimer accepted the sacrifice with
- an absent-minded carelessness which would have been galling to any
- girl. "We might just as well not be engaged at all. You never take me
- anywhere."
- "I asked you to come with me to watch the Open Championship."
- "Why don't you ever take me to dances?"
- "I can't dance."
- "You could learn."
- "But I'm not sure if dancing is a good thing for a fellow's game. You
- never hear of any first-class pro. dancing. James Braid doesn't dance."
- "Well, my mind's made up. Mortimer, you must choose between golf and
- me."
- "But, darling, I went round in a hundred and one yesterday. You can't
- expect a fellow to give up golf when he's at the top of his game."
- "Very well. I have nothing more to say. Our engagement is at an end."
- "Don't throw me over, Betty," pleaded Mortimer, and there was that in
- his voice which cut me to the heart. "You'll make me so miserable. And,
- when I'm miserable, I always slice my approach shots."
- Betty Weston drew herself up. Her face was hard.
- "Here is your ring!" she said, and swept from the room.
- * * * * *
- For a moment after she had gone Mortimer remained very still, looking
- at the glistening circle in his hand. I stole across the room and
- patted his shoulder.
- "Bear up, my boy, bear up!" I said.
- He looked at me piteously.
- "Stymied!" he muttered.
- "Be brave!"
- He went on, speaking as if to himself.
- "I had pictured--ah, how often I had pictured!--our little home! Hers
- and mine. She sewing in her arm-chair, I practising putts on the
- hearth-rug----" He choked. "While in the corner, little Harry Vardon
- Sturgis played with little J. H. Taylor Sturgis. And round the
- room--reading, busy with their childish tasks--little George Duncan
- Sturgis, Abe Mitchell Sturgis, Harold Hilton Sturgis, Edward Ray
- Sturgis, Horace Hutchinson Sturgis, and little James Braid Sturgis."
- "My boy! My boy!" I cried.
- "What's the matter?"
- "Weren't you giving yourself rather a large family?"
- He shook his head moodily.
- "Was I?" he said, dully. "I don't know. What's bogey?"
- There was a silence.
- "And yet----" he said, at last, in a low voice. He paused. An odd,
- bright look had come into his eyes. He seemed suddenly to be himself
- again, the old, happy Mortimer Sturgis I had known so well. "And yet,"
- he said, "who knows? Perhaps it is all for the best. They might all
- have turned out tennis-players!" He raised his niblick again, his face
- aglow. "Playing thirteen!" he said. "I think the game here would be to
- chip out through the door and work round the club-house to the green,
- don't you?"
- * * * * *
- Little remains to be told. Betty and Eddie have been happily married
- for years. Mortimer's handicap is now down to eighteen, and he is
- improving all the time. He was not present at the wedding, being
- unavoidably detained by a medal tournament; but, if you turn up the
- files and look at the list of presents, which were both numerous and
- costly, you will see--somewhere in the middle of the column, the words:
- STURGIS, J. MORTIMER.
- _Two dozen Silver King Golf-balls and one patent Sturgis
- Aluminium Self-Adjusting, Self-Compensating Putting-Cleek._
- 4
- _Sundered Hearts_
- In the smoking-room of the club-house a cheerful fire was burning, and
- the Oldest Member glanced from time to time out of the window into the
- gathering dusk. Snow was falling lightly on the links. From where he
- sat, the Oldest Member had a good view of the ninth green; and
- presently, out of the greyness of the December evening, there appeared
- over the brow of the hill a golf-ball. It trickled across the green,
- and stopped within a yard of the hole. The Oldest Member nodded
- approvingly. A good approach-shot.
- A young man in a tweed suit clambered on to the green, holed out with
- easy confidence, and, shouldering his bag, made his way to the
- club-house. A few moments later he entered the smoking-room, and
- uttered an exclamation of rapture at the sight of the fire.
- "I'm frozen stiff!"
- He rang for a waiter and ordered a hot drink. The Oldest Member gave a
- gracious assent to the suggestion that he should join him.
- "I like playing in winter," said the young man. "You get the course to
- yourself, for the world is full of slackers who only turn out when the
- weather suits them. I cannot understand where they get the nerve to
- call themselves golfers."
- "Not everyone is as keen as you are, my boy," said the Sage, dipping
- gratefully into his hot drink. "If they were, the world would be a
- better place, and we should hear less of all this modern unrest."
- "I _am_ pretty keen," admitted the young man.
- "I have only encountered one man whom I could describe as keener. I
- allude to Mortimer Sturgis."
- "The fellow who took up golf at thirty-eight and let the girl he was
- engaged to marry go off with someone else because he hadn't the time to
- combine golf with courtship? I remember. You were telling me about him
- the other day."
- "There is a sequel to that story, if you would care to hear it," said
- the Oldest Member.
- "You have the honour," said the young man. "Go ahead!"
- * * * * *
- Some people (began the Oldest Member) considered that Mortimer Sturgis
- was too wrapped up in golf, and blamed him for it. I could never see
- eye to eye with them. In the days of King Arthur nobody thought the
- worse of a young knight if he suspended all his social and business
- engagements in favour of a search for the Holy Grail. In the Middle
- Ages a man could devote his whole life to the Crusades, and the public
- fawned upon him. Why, then, blame the man of today for a zealous
- attention to the modern equivalent, the Quest of Scratch! Mortimer
- Sturgis never became a scratch player, but he did eventually get his
- handicap down to nine, and I honour him for it.
- The story which I am about to tell begins in what might be called the
- middle period of Sturgis's career. He had reached the stage when his
- handicap was a wobbly twelve; and, as you are no doubt aware, it is
- then that a man really begins to golf in the true sense of the word.
- Mortimer's fondness for the game until then had been merely tepid
- compared with what it became now. He had played a little before, but
- now he really buckled to and got down to it. It was at this point, too,
- that he began once more to entertain thoughts of marriage. A profound
- statistician in this one department, he had discovered that practically
- all the finest exponents of the art are married men; and the thought
- that there might be something in the holy state which improved a man's
- game, and that he was missing a good thing, troubled him a great deal.
- Moreover, the paternal instinct had awakened in him. As he justly
- pointed out, whether marriage improved your game or not, it was to Old
- Tom Morris's marriage that the existence of young Tommy Morris, winner
- of the British Open Championship four times in succession, could be
- directly traced. In fact, at the age of forty-two, Mortimer Sturgis was
- in just the frame of mind to take some nice girl aside and ask her to
- become a step-mother to his eleven drivers, his baffy, his twenty-eight
- putters, and the rest of the ninety-four clubs which he had accumulated
- in the course of his golfing career. The sole stipulation, of course,
- which he made when dreaming his daydreams was that the future Mrs.
- Sturgis must be a golfer. I can still recall the horror in his face
- when one girl, admirable in other respects, said that she had never
- heard of Harry Vardon, and didn't he mean Dolly Vardon? She has since
- proved an excellent wife and mother, but Mortimer Sturgis never spoke
- to her again.
- With the coming of January, it was Mortimer's practice to leave England
- and go to the South of France, where there was sunshine and crisp dry
- turf. He pursued his usual custom this year. With his suit-case and his
- ninety-four clubs he went off to Saint Brule, staying as he always did
- at the Hotel Superbe, where they knew him, and treated with an amiable
- tolerance his habit of practising chip-shots in his bedroom. On the
- first evening, after breaking a statuette of the Infant Samuel in
- Prayer, he dressed and went down to dinner. And the first thing he saw
- was Her.
- Mortimer Sturgis, as you know, had been engaged before, but Betty
- Weston had never inspired the tumultuous rush of emotion which the mere
- sight of this girl had set loose in him. He told me later that just to
- watch her holing out her soup gave him a sort of feeling you get when
- your drive collides with a rock in the middle of a tangle of rough and
- kicks back into the middle of the fairway. If golf had come late in
- life to Mortimer Sturgis, love came later still, and just as the golf,
- attacking him in middle life, had been some golf, so was the love
- considerable love. Mortimer finished his dinner in a trance, which is
- the best way to do it at some hotels, and then scoured the place for
- someone who would introduce him. He found such a person eventually and
- the meeting took place.
- * * * * *
- She was a small and rather fragile-looking girl, with big blue eyes and
- a cloud of golden hair. She had a sweet expression, and her left wrist
- was in a sling. She looked up at Mortimer as if she had at last found
- something that amounted to something. I am inclined to think it was a
- case of love at first sight on both sides.
- "Fine weather we're having," said Mortimer, who was a capital
- conversationalist.
- "Yes," said the girl.
- "I like fine weather."
- "So do I."
- "There's something about fine weather!"
- "Yes."
- "It's--it's--well, fine weather's so much finer than weather that isn't
- fine," said Mortimer.
- He looked at the girl a little anxiously, fearing he might be taking
- her out of her depth, but she seemed to have followed his train of
- thought perfectly.
- "Yes, isn't it?" she said. "It's so--so fine."
- "That's just what I meant," said Mortimer. "So fine. You've just hit
- it."
- He was charmed. The combination of beauty with intelligence is so rare.
- "I see you've hurt your wrist," he went on, pointing to the sling.
- "Yes. I strained it a little playing in the championship."
- "The championship?" Mortimer was interested. "It's awfully rude of me,"
- he said, apologetically, "but I didn't catch your name just now."
- "My name is Somerset."
- Mortimer had been bending forward solicitously. He overbalanced and
- nearly fell off his chair. The shock had been stunning. Even before he
- had met and spoken to her, he had told himself that he loved this girl
- with the stored-up love of a lifetime. And she was Mary Somerset! The
- hotel lobby danced before Mortimer's eyes.
- The name will, of course, be familiar to you. In the early rounds of
- the Ladies' Open Golf Championship of that year nobody had paid much
- attention to Mary Somerset. She had survived her first two matches, but
- her opponents had been nonentities like herself. And then, in the third
- round, she had met and defeated the champion. From that point on, her
- name was on everybody's lips. She became favourite. And she justified
- the public confidence by sailing into the final and winning easily. And
- here she was, talking to him like an ordinary person, and, if he could
- read the message in her eyes, not altogether indifferent to his charms,
- if you could call them that.
- "Golly!" said Mortimer, awed.
- * * * * *
- Their friendship ripened rapidly, as friendships do in the South of
- France. In that favoured clime, you find the girl and Nature does the
- rest. On the second morning of their acquaintance Mortimer invited her
- to walk round the links with him and watch him play. He did it a little
- diffidently, for his golf was not of the calibre that would be likely
- to extort admiration from a champion. On the other hand, one should
- never let slip the opportunity of acquiring wrinkles on the game, and
- he thought that Miss Somerset, if she watched one or two of his shots,
- might tell him just what he ought to do. And sure enough, the opening
- arrived on the fourth hole, where Mortimer, after a drive which
- surprised even himself, found his ball in a nasty cuppy lie.
- He turned to the girl.
- "What ought I to do here?" he asked.
- Miss Somerset looked at the ball. She seemed to be weighing the matter
- in her mind.
- "Give it a good hard knock," she said.
- Mortimer knew what she meant. She was advocating a full iron. The only
- trouble was that, when he tried anything more ambitious than a
- half-swing, except off the tee, he almost invariably topped. However,
- he could not fail this wonderful girl, so he swung well back and took a
- chance. His enterprise was rewarded. The ball flew out of the
- indentation in the turf as cleanly as though John Henry Taylor had been
- behind it, and rolled, looking neither to left nor to right, straight
- for the pin. A few moments later Mortimer Sturgis had holed out one
- under bogey, and it was only the fear that, having known him for so
- short a time, she might be startled and refuse him that kept him from
- proposing then and there. This exhibition of golfing generalship on her
- part had removed his last doubts. He knew that, if he lived for ever,
- there could be no other girl in the world for him. With her at his
- side, what might he not do? He might get his handicap down to six--to
- three--to scratch--to plus something! Good heavens, why, even the
- Amateur Championship was not outside the range of possibility. Mortimer
- Sturgis shook his putter solemnly in the air, and vowed a silent vow
- that he would win this pearl among women.
- Now, when a man feels like that, it is impossible to restrain him long.
- For a week Mortimer Sturgis's soul sizzled within him: then he could
- contain himself no longer. One night, at one of the informal dances at
- the hotel, he drew the girl out on to the moonlit terrace.
- "Miss Somerset----" he began, stuttering with emotion like an
- imperfectly-corked bottle of ginger-beer. "Miss Somerset--may I call
- you Mary?"
- The girl looked at him with eyes that shone softly in the dim light.
- "Mary?" she repeated. "Why, of course, if you like----"
- "If I like!" cried Mortimer. "Don't you know that it is my dearest
- wish? Don't you know that I would rather be permitted to call you Mary
- than do the first hole at Muirfield in two? Oh, Mary, how I have longed
- for this moment! I love you! I love you! Ever since I met you I have
- known that you were the one girl in this vast world whom I would die to
- win! Mary, will you be mine? Shall we go round together? Will you fix
- up a match with me on the links of life which shall end only when the
- Grim Reaper lays us both a stymie?"
- She drooped towards him.
- "Mortimer!" she murmured.
- He held out his arms, then drew back. His face had grown suddenly
- tense, and there were lines of pain about his mouth.
- "Wait!" he said, in a strained voice. "Mary, I love you dearly, and
- because I love you so dearly I cannot let you trust your sweet life to
- me blindly. I have a confession to make, I am not--I have not always
- been"--he paused--"a good man," he said, in a low voice.
- She started indignantly.
- "How can you say that? You are the best, the kindest, the bravest man I
- have ever met! Who but a good man would have risked his life to save me
- from drowning?"
- "Drowning?" Mortimer's voice seemed perplexed. "You? What do you mean?"
- "Have you forgotten the time when I fell in the sea last week, and you
- jumped in with all your clothes on----"
- "Of course, yes," said Mortimer. "I remember now. It was the day I did
- the long seventh in five. I got off a good tee-shot straight down the
- fairway, took a baffy for my second, and---- But that is not the point.
- It is sweet and generous of you to think so highly of what was the
- merest commonplace act of ordinary politeness, but I must repeat, that
- judged by the standards of your snowy purity, I am not a good man. I do
- not come to you clean and spotless as a young girl should expect her
- husband to come to her. Once, playing in a foursome, my ball fell in
- some long grass. Nobody was near me. We had no caddies, and the others
- were on the fairway. God knows----" His voice shook. "God knows I
- struggled against the temptation. But I fell. I kicked the ball on to a
- little bare mound, from which it was an easy task with a nice
- half-mashie to reach the green for a snappy seven. Mary, there have
- been times when, going round by myself, I have allowed myself ten-foot
- putts on three holes in succession, simply in order to be able to say I
- had done the course in under a hundred. Ah! you shrink from me! You are
- disgusted!"
- "I'm not disgusted! And I don't shrink! I only shivered because it is
- rather cold."
- "Then you can love me in spite of my past?"
- "Mortimer!"
- She fell into his arms.
- "My dearest," he said presently, "what a happy life ours will be. That
- is, if you do not find that you have made a mistake."
- "A mistake!" she cried, scornfully.
- "Well, my handicap is twelve, you know, and not so darned twelve at
- that. There are days when I play my second from the fairway of the next
- hole but one, days when I couldn't putt into a coal-hole with
- 'Welcome!' written over it. And you are a Ladies' Open Champion. Still,
- if you think it's all right----. Oh, Mary, you little know how I have
- dreamed of some day marrying a really first-class golfer! Yes, that was
- my vision--of walking up the aisle with some sweet plus two girl on my
- arm. You shivered again. You are catching cold."
- "It is a little cold," said the girl. She spoke in a small voice.
- "Let me take you in, sweetheart," said Mortimer. "I'll just put you in
- a comfortable chair with a nice cup of coffee, and then I think I
- really must come out again and tramp about and think how perfectly
- splendid everything is."
- * * * * *
- They were married a few weeks later, very quietly, in the little
- village church of Saint Brule. The secretary of the local golf-club
- acted as best man for Mortimer, and a girl from the hotel was the only
- bridesmaid. The whole business was rather a disappointment to Mortimer,
- who had planned out a somewhat florid ceremony at St. George's, Hanover
- Square, with the Vicar of Tooting (a scratch player excellent at short
- approach shots) officiating, and "The Voice That Breathed O'er St.
- Andrews" boomed from the organ. He had even had the idea of copying the
- military wedding and escorting his bride out of the church under an
- arch of crossed cleeks. But she would have none of this pomp. She
- insisted on a quiet wedding, and for the honeymoon trip preferred a
- tour through Italy. Mortimer, who had wanted to go to Scotland to visit
- the birthplace of James Braid, yielded amiably, for he loved her
- dearly. But he did not think much of Italy. In Rome, the great
- monuments of the past left him cold. Of the Temple of Vespasian, all he
- thought was that it would be a devil of a place to be bunkered behind.
- The Colosseum aroused a faint spark of interest in him, as he
- speculated whether Abe Mitchell would use a full brassey to carry it.
- In Florence, the view over the Tuscan Hills from the Torre Rosa,
- Fiesole, over which his bride waxed enthusiastic, seemed to him merely
- a nasty bit of rough which would take a deal of getting out of.
- And so, in the fullness of time, they came home to Mortimer's cosy
- little house adjoining the links.
- * * * * *
- Mortimer was so busy polishing his ninety-four clubs on the evening of
- their arrival that he failed to notice that his wife was preoccupied. A
- less busy man would have perceived at a glance that she was distinctly
- nervous. She started at sudden noises, and once, when he tried the
- newest of his mashie-niblicks and broke one of the drawing-room
- windows, she screamed sharply. In short her manner was strange, and, if
- Edgar Allen Poe had put her into "The Fall Of the House of Usher", she
- would have fitted it like the paper on the wall. She had the air of one
- waiting tensely for the approach of some imminent doom. Mortimer,
- humming gaily to himself as he sand-papered the blade of his
- twenty-second putter, observed none of this. He was thinking of the
- morrow's play.
- "Your wrist's quite well again now, darling, isn't it?" he said.
- "Yes. Yes, quite well."
- "Fine!" said Mortimer. "We'll breakfast early--say at half-past
- seven--and then we'll be able to get in a couple of rounds before
- lunch. A couple more in the afternoon will about see us through. One
- doesn't want to over-golf oneself the first day." He swung the putter
- joyfully. "How had we better play do you think? We might start with you
- giving me a half."
- She did not speak. She was very pale. She clutched the arm of her chair
- tightly till the knuckles showed white under the skin.
- To anybody but Mortimer her nervousness would have been even more
- obvious on the following morning, as they reached the first tee. Her
- eyes were dull and heavy, and she started when a grasshopper chirruped.
- But Mortimer was too occupied with thinking how jolly it was having the
- course to themselves to notice anything.
- He scooped some sand out of the box, and took a ball out of her bag.
- His wedding present to her had been a brand-new golf-bag, six dozen
- balls, and a full set of the most expensive clubs, all born in
- Scotland.
- "Do you like a high tee?" he asked.
- "Oh, no," she replied, coming with a start out of her thoughts.
- "Doctors say it's indigestible."
- Mortimer laughed merrily.
- "Deuced good!" he chuckled. "Is that your own or did you read it in a
- comic paper? There you are!" He placed the ball on a little hill of
- sand, and got up. "Now let's see some of that championship form of
- yours!"
- She burst into tears.
- "My darling!"
- Mortimer ran to her and put his arms round her. She tried weakly to
- push him away.
- "My angel! What is it?"
- She sobbed brokenly. Then, with an effort, she spoke.
- "Mortimer, I have deceived you!"
- "Deceived me?"
- "I have never played golf in my life! I don't even know how to hold the
- caddie!"
- Mortimer's heart stood still. This sounded like the gibberings of an
- unbalanced mind, and no man likes his wife to begin gibbering
- immediately after the honeymoon.
- "My precious! You are not yourself!"
- "I am! That's the whole trouble! I'm myself and not the girl you
- thought I was!"
- Mortimer stared at her, puzzled. He was thinking that it was a little
- difficult and that, to work it out properly, he would need a pencil and
- a bit of paper.
- "My name is not Mary!"
- "But you said it was."
- "I didn't. You asked if you could call me Mary, and I said you might,
- because I loved you too much to deny your smallest whim. I was going on
- to say that it wasn't my name, but you interrupted me."
- "Not Mary!" The horrid truth was coming home to Mortimer. "You were not
- Mary Somerset?"
- "Mary is my cousin. My name is Mabel."
- "But you said you had sprained your wrist playing in the championship."
- "So I had. The mallet slipped in my hand."
- "The mallet!" Mortimer clutched at his forehead. "You didn't say 'the
- mallet'?"
- "Yes, Mortimer! The mallet!"
- A faint blush of shame mantled her cheek, and into her blue eyes there
- came a look of pain, but she faced him bravely.
- "I am the Ladies' Open Croquet Champion!" she whispered.
- Mortimer Sturgis cried aloud, a cry that was like the shriek of some
- wounded animal.
- "Croquet!" He gulped, and stared at her with unseeing eyes. He was no
- prude, but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting
- man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to be.
- "Croquet!"
- There was a long silence. The light breeze sang in the pines above
- them. The grasshoppers chirrupped at their feet.
- She began to speak again in a low, monotonous voice.
- "I blame myself! I should have told you before, while there was yet
- time for you to withdraw. I should have confessed this to you that
- night on the terrace in the moonlight. But you swept me off my feet,
- and I was in your arms before I realized what you would think of me. It
- was only then that I understood what my supposed skill at golf meant to
- you, and then it was too late. I loved you too much to let you go! I
- could not bear the thought of you recoiling from me. Oh, I was
- mad--mad! I knew that I could not keep up the deception for ever, that
- you must find me out in time. But I had a wild hope that by then we
- should be so close to one another that you might find it in your heart
- to forgive. But I was wrong. I see it now. There are some things that
- no man can forgive. Some things," she repeated, dully, "which no man
- can forgive."
- She turned away. Mortimer awoke from his trance.
- "Stop!" he cried. "Don't go!"
- "I must go."
- "I want to talk this over."
- She shook her head sadly and started to walk slowly across the sunlit
- grass. Mortimer watched her, his brain in a whirl of chaotic thoughts.
- She disappeared through the trees.
- Mortimer sat down on the tee-box, and buried his face in his hands. For
- a time he could think of nothing but the cruel blow he had received.
- This was the end of those rainbow visions of himself and her going
- through life side by side, she lovingly criticizing his stance and his
- back-swing, he learning wisdom from her. A croquet-player! He was
- married to a woman who hit coloured balls through hoops. Mortimer
- Sturgis writhed in torment. A strong man's agony.
- The mood passed. How long it had lasted, he did not know. But suddenly,
- as he sat there, he became once more aware of the glow of the sunshine
- and the singing of the birds. It was as if a shadow had lifted. Hope
- and optimism crept into his heart.
- He loved her. He loved her still. She was part of him, and nothing that
- she could do had power to alter that. She had deceived him, yes. But
- why had she deceived him? Because she loved him so much that she could
- not bear to lose him. Dash it all, it was a bit of a compliment.
- And, after all, poor girl, was it her fault? Was it not rather the
- fault of her upbringing? Probably she had been taught to play croquet
- when a mere child, hardly able to distinguish right from wrong. No
- steps had been taken to eradicate the virus from her system, and the
- thing had become chronic. Could she be blamed? Was she not more to be
- pitied than censured?
- Mortimer rose to his feet, his heart swelling with generous
- forgiveness. The black horror had passed from him. The future seemed
- once more bright. It was not too late. She was still young, many years
- younger than he himself had been when he took up golf, and surely, if
- she put herself into the hands of a good specialist and practised every
- day, she might still hope to become a fair player. He reached the house
- and ran in, calling her name.
- No answer came. He sped from room to room, but all were empty.
- She had gone. The house was there. The furniture was there. The canary
- sang in its cage, the cook in the kitchen. The pictures still hung on
- the walls. But she had gone. Everything was at home except his wife.
- Finally, propped up against the cup he had once won in a handicap
- competition, he saw a letter. With a sinking heart he tore open the
- envelope.
- It was a pathetic, a tragic letter, the letter of a woman endeavouring
- to express all the anguish of a torn heart with one of those
- fountain-pens which suspend the flow of ink about twice in every three
- words. The gist of it was that she felt she had wronged him; that,
- though he might forgive, he could never forget; and that she was going
- away, away out into the world alone.
- Mortimer sank into a chair, and stared blankly before him. She had
- scratched the match.
- * * * * *
- I am not a married man myself, so have had no experience of how it
- feels to have one's wife whizz off silently into the unknown; but I
- should imagine that it must be something like taking a full swing with
- a brassey and missing the ball. Something, I take it, of the same sense
- of mingled shock, chagrin, and the feeling that nobody loves one, which
- attacks a man in such circumstances, must come to the bereaved husband.
- And one can readily understand how terribly the incident must have
- shaken Mortimer Sturgis. I was away at the time, but I am told by those
- who saw him that his game went all to pieces.
- He had never shown much indication of becoming anything in the nature
- of a first-class golfer, but he had managed to acquire one or two
- decent shots. His work with the light iron was not at all bad, and he
- was a fairly steady putter. But now, under the shadow of this tragedy,
- he dropped right back to the form of his earliest period. It was a
- pitiful sight to see this gaunt, haggard man with the look of dumb
- anguish behind his spectacles taking as many as three shots sometimes
- to get past the ladies' tee. His slice, of which he had almost cured
- himself, returned with such virulence that in the list of ordinary
- hazards he had now to include the tee-box. And, when he was not
- slicing, he was pulling. I have heard that he was known, when driving
- at the sixth, to get bunkered in his own caddie, who had taken up his
- position directly behind him. As for the deep sand-trap in front of the
- seventh green, he spent so much of his time in it that there was some
- informal talk among the members of the committee of charging him a
- small weekly rent.
- A man of comfortable independent means, he lived during these days on
- next to nothing. Golf-balls cost him a certain amount, but the bulk of
- his income he spent in efforts to discover his wife's whereabouts. He
- advertised in all the papers. He employed private detectives. He even,
- much as it revolted his finer instincts, took to travelling about the
- country, watching croquet matches. But she was never among the players.
- I am not sure that he did not find a melancholy comfort in this, for it
- seemed to show that, whatever his wife might be and whatever she might
- be doing, she had not gone right under.
- Summer passed. Autumn came and went. Winter arrived. The days grew
- bleak and chill, and an early fall of snow, heavier than had been known
- at that time of the year for a long while, put an end to golf. Mortimer
- spent his days indoors, staring gloomily through the window at the
- white mantle that covered the earth.
- It was Christmas Eve.
- * * * * *
- The young man shifted uneasily on his seat. His face was long and
- sombre.
- "All this is very depressing," he said.
- "These soul tragedies," agreed the Oldest Member, "are never very
- cheery."
- "Look here," said the young man, firmly, "tell me one thing frankly, as
- man to man. Did Mortimer find her dead in the snow, covered except for
- her face, on which still lingered that faint, sweet smile which he
- remembered so well? Because, if he did, I'm going home."
- "No, no," protested the Oldest Member. "Nothing of that kind."
- "You're sure? You aren't going to spring it on me suddenly?"
- "No, no!"
- The young man breathed a relieved sigh.
- "It was your saying that about the white mantle covering the earth that
- made me suspicious."
- The Sage resumed.
- * * * * *
- It was Christmas Eve. All day the snow had been falling, and now it lay
- thick and deep over the countryside. Mortimer Sturgis, his frugal
- dinner concluded--what with losing his wife and not being able to get
- any golf, he had little appetite these days--was sitting in his
- drawing-room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon wearying
- of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the
- front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no. It was
- freezing. The snow, as he tested it with his shoe, crackled crisply.
- The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer
- that the sooner he packed up and went to the South of France, the
- better. He was just about to close the door, when suddenly he thought
- he heard his own name called.
- "Mortimer!"
- Had he been mistaken? The voice had sounded faint and far away.
- "Mortimer!"
- He thrilled from head to foot. This time there could be no mistake. It
- was the voice he knew so well, his wife's voice, and it had come from
- somewhere down near the garden-gate. It is difficult to judge distance
- where sounds are concerned, but Mortimer estimated that the voice had
- spoken about a short mashie-niblick and an easy putt from where he
- stood.
- The next moment he was racing down the snow-covered path. And then his
- heart stood still. What was that dark something on the ground just
- inside the gate? He leaped towards it. He passed his hands over it. It
- was a human body. Quivering, he struck a match. It went out. He struck
- another. That went out, too. He struck a third, and it burnt with a
- steady flame; and, stooping, he saw that it was his wife who lay there,
- cold and stiff. Her eyes were closed, and on her face still lingered
- that faint, sweet smile which he remembered so well.
- * * * * *
- The young man rose with a set face. He reached for his golf-bag.
- "I call that a dirty trick," he said, "after you promised--" The Sage
- waved him back to his seat.
- "Have no fear! She had only fainted."
- "You said she was cold."
- "Wouldn't you be cold if you were lying in the snow?"
- "And stiff."
- "Mrs. Sturgis was stiff because the train-service was bad, it being the
- holiday-season, and she had had to walk all the way from the junction,
- a distance of eight miles. Sit down and allow me to proceed."
- * * * * *
- Tenderly, reverently Mortimer Sturgis picked her up and began to bear
- her into the house. Half-way there, his foot slipped on a piece of ice
- and he fell heavily, barking his shin and shooting his lovely burden
- out on to the snow.
- The fall brought her to. She opened her eyes.
- "Mortimer, darling!" she said.
- Mortimer had just been going to say something else, but he checked
- himself.
- "Are you alive?" he asked.
- "Yes," she replied.
- "Thank God!" said Mortimer, scooping some of the snow out of the back
- of his collar.
- Together they went into the house, and into the drawing-room. Wife
- gazed at husband, husband at wife. There was a silence.
- "Rotten weather!" said Mortimer.
- "Yes, isn't it!"
- The spell was broken. They fell into each other's arms. And presently
- they were sitting side by side on the sofa, holding hands, just as if
- that awful parting had been but a dream.
- It was Mortimer who made the first reference to it.
- "I say, you know," he said, "you oughtn't to have nipped away like
- that!"
- "I thought you hated me!"
- "Hated _you_! I love you better than life itself! I would sooner
- have smashed my pet driver than have had you leave me!"
- She thrilled at the words.
- "Darling!"
- Mortimer fondled her hand.
- "I was just coming back to tell you that I loved you still. I was going
- to suggest that you took lessons from some good professional. And I
- found you gone!"
- "I wasn't worthy of you, Mortimer!"
- "My angel!" He pressed his lips to her hair, and spoke solemnly. "All
- this has taught me a lesson, dearest. I knew all along, and I know it
- more than ever now, that it is you--you that I want. Just you! I don't
- care if you don't play golf. I don't care----" He hesitated, then went on
- manfully. "I don't care even if you play croquet, so long as you are
- with me!"
- For a moment her face showed rapture that made it almost angelic. She
- uttered a low moan of ecstasy. She kissed him. Then she rose.
- "Mortimer, look!"
- "What at?"
- "Me. Just look!"
- The jigger which he had been polishing lay on a chair close by. She
- took it up. From the bowl of golf-balls on the mantelpiece she selected
- a brand new one. She placed it on the carpet. She addressed it. Then,
- with a merry cry of "Fore!" she drove it hard and straight through the
- glass of the china-cupboard.
- "Good God!" cried Mortimer, astounded. It had been a bird of a shot.
- She turned to him, her whole face alight with that beautiful smile.
- "When I left you, Mortie," she said, "I had but one aim in life,
- somehow to make myself worthy of you. I saw your advertisements in the
- papers, and I longed to answer them, but I was not ready. All this
- long, weary while I have been in the village of Auchtermuchtie, in
- Scotland, studying under Tamms McMickle."
- "Not the Tamms McMickle who finished fourth in the Open Championship of
- 1911, and had the best ball in the foursome in 1912 with Jock McHaggis,
- Andy McHeather, and Sandy McHoots!"
- "Yes, Mortimer, the very same. Oh, it was difficult at first. I missed
- my mallet, and long to steady the ball with my foot and use the toe of
- the club. Wherever there was a direction post I aimed at it
- automatically. But I conquered my weakness. I practised steadily. And
- now Mr. McMickle says my handicap would be a good twenty-four on any
- links." She smiled apologetically. "Of course, that doesn't sound much
- to you! You were a twelve when I left you, and now I suppose you are
- down to eight or something."
- Mortimer shook his head.
- "Alas, no!" he replied, gravely. "My game went right off for some
- reason or other, and I'm twenty-four, too."
- "For some reason or other!" She uttered a cry. "Oh, I know what the
- reason was! How can I ever forgive myself! I have ruined your game!"
- The brightness came back to Mortimer's eyes. He embraced her fondly.
- "Do not reproach yourself, dearest," he murmured. "It is the best thing
- that could have happened. From now on, we start level, two hearts that
- beat as one, two drivers that drive as one. I could not wish it
- otherwise. By George! It's just like that thing of Tennyson's."
- He recited the lines softly:
- _My bride,
- My wife, my life. Oh, we will walk the links
- Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
- And so thro' those dark bunkers off the course
- That no man knows. Indeed, I love thee: come,
- Yield thyself up: our handicaps are one;
- Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
- Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me._
- She laid her hands in his.
- "And now, Mortie, darling," she said, "I want to tell you all about how
- I did the long twelfth at Auchtermuchtie in one under bogey."
- 5
- _The Salvation of George Mackintosh_
- The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his
- usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice
- which an ancient Greek would have used when asking the executioner to
- bring on the hemlock.
- Sunk in the recesses of his favourite settee the Oldest Member had
- watched him with silent sympathy.
- "How did you get on?" he inquired.
- "He beat me."
- The Oldest Member nodded his venerable head.
- "You have had a trying time, if I am not mistaken. I feared as much
- when I saw you go out with Pobsley. How many a young man have I seen go
- out with Herbert Pobsley exulting in his youth, and crawl back at
- eventide looking like a toad under the harrow! He talked?"
- "All the time, confound it! Put me right off my stroke."
- The Oldest Member sighed.
- "The talking golfer is undeniably the most pronounced pest of our
- complex modern civilization," he said, "and the most difficult to deal
- with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have
- produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in
- action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad
- as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell you
- about George Mackintosh?"
- "I don't think so."
- "His," said the Sage, "is the only case of golfing garrulity I have
- ever known where a permanent cure was affected. If you would care to
- hear about it----?"
- * * * * *
- George Mackintosh (said the Oldest Member), when I first knew him, was
- one of the most admirable young fellows I have ever met. A handsome,
- well-set-up man, with no vices except a tendency to use the mashie for
- shots which should have been made with the light iron. And as for his
- positive virtues, they were too numerous to mention. He never swayed
- his body, moved his head, or pressed. He was always ready to utter a
- tactful grunt when his opponent foozled. And when he himself achieved a
- glaring fluke, his self-reproachful click of the tongue was music to
- his adversary's bruised soul. But of all his virtues the one that most
- endeared him to me and to all thinking men was the fact that, from the
- start of a round to the finish, he never spoke a word except when
- absolutely compelled to do so by the exigencies of the game. And it was
- this man who subsequently, for a black period which lives in the memory
- of all his contemporaries, was known as Gabby George and became a shade
- less popular than the germ of Spanish Influenza. Truly, _corruptio
- optimi pessima!_
- One of the things that sadden a man as he grows older and reviews his
- life is the reflection that his most devastating deeds were generally
- the ones which he did with the best motives. The thought is
- disheartening. I can honestly say that, when George Mackintosh came to
- me and told me his troubles, my sole desire was to ameliorate his lot.
- That I might be starting on the downward path a man whom I liked and
- respected never once occurred to me.
- One night after dinner when George Mackintosh came in, I could see at
- once that there was something on his mind, but what this could be I was
- at a loss to imagine, for I had been playing with him myself all the
- afternoon, and he had done an eighty-one and a seventy-nine. And, as I
- had not left the links till dusk was beginning to fall, it was
- practically impossible that he could have gone out again and done
- badly. The idea of financial trouble seemed equally out of the
- question. George had a good job with the old-established legal firm of
- Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Cootes, Toots, and Peabody. The
- third alternative, that he might be in love, I rejected at once. In all
- the time I had known him I had never seen a sign that George Mackintosh
- gave a thought to the opposite sex.
- Yet this, bizarre as it seemed, was the true solution. Scarcely had he
- seated himself and lit a cigar when he blurted out his confession.
- "What would you do in a case like this?" he said.
- "Like what?"
- "Well----" He choked, and a rich blush permeated his surface. "Well, it
- seems a silly thing to say and all that, but I'm in love with Miss
- Tennant, you know!"
- "You are in love with Celia Tennant?"
- "Of course I am. I've got eyes, haven't I? Who else is there that any
- sane man could possibly be in love with? That," he went on, moodily,
- "is the whole trouble. There's a field of about twenty-nine, and I
- should think my place in the betting is about thirty-three to one."
- "I cannot agree with you there," I said. "You have every advantage, it
- appears to me. You are young, amiable, good-looking, comfortably off,
- scratch----"
- "But I can't talk, confound it!" he burst out. "And how is a man to get
- anywhere at this sort of game without talking?"
- "You are talking perfectly fluently now."
- "Yes, to you. But put me in front of Celia Tennant, and I simply make a
- sort of gurgling noise like a sheep with the botts. It kills my chances
- stone dead. You know these other men. I can give Claude Mainwaring a
- third and beat him. I can give Eustace Brinkley a stroke a hole and
- simply trample on his corpse. But when it comes to talking to a girl,
- I'm not in their class."
- "You must not be diffident."
- "But I _am_ diffident. What's the good of saying I mustn't be
- diffident when I'm the man who wrote the words and music, when
- Diffidence is my middle name and my telegraphic address? I can't help
- being diffident."
- "Surely you could overcome it?"
- "But how? It was in the hope that you might be able to suggest
- something that I came round tonight."
- And this was where I did the fatal thing. It happened that, just before
- I took up "Braid on the Push-Shot," I had been dipping into the current
- number of a magazine, and one of the advertisements, I chanced to
- remember, might have been framed with a special eye to George's
- unfortunate case. It was that one, which I have no doubt you have seen,
- which treats of "How to Become a Convincing Talker". I picked up this
- magazine now and handed it to George.
- He studied it for a few minutes in thoughtful silence. He looked at the
- picture of the Man who had taken the course being fawned upon by lovely
- women, while the man who had let this opportunity slip stood outside
- the group gazing with a wistful envy.
- "They never do that to me," said George.
- "Do what, my boy?"
- "Cluster round, clinging cooingly."
- "I gather from the letterpress that they will if you write for the
- booklet."
- "You think there is really something in it?"
- "I see no reason why eloquence should not be taught by mail. One seems
- to be able to acquire every other desirable quality in that manner
- nowadays."
- "I might try it. After all, it's not expensive. There's no doubt about
- it," he murmured, returning to his perusal, "that fellow does look
- popular. Of course, the evening dress may have something to do with
- it."
- "Not at all. The other man, you will notice, is also wearing evening
- dress, and yet he is merely among those on the outskirts. It is simply
- a question of writing for the booklet."
- "Sent post free."
- "Sent, as you say, post free."
- "I've a good mind to try it."
- "I see no reason why you should not."
- "I will, by Duncan!" He tore the page out of the magazine and put it in
- his pocket. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give this thing a trial
- for a week or two, and at the end of that time I'll go to the boss and
- see how he reacts when I ask for a rise of salary. If he crawls, it'll
- show there's something in this. If he flings me out, it will prove the
- thing's no good."
- We left it at that, and I am bound to say--owing, no doubt, to my not
- having written for the booklet of the Memory Training Course advertised
- on the adjoining page of the magazine--the matter slipped from my mind.
- When, therefore, a few weeks later, I received a telegram from young
- Mackintosh which ran:
- _Worked like magic,_
- I confess I was intensely puzzled. It was only a quarter of an hour
- before George himself arrived that I solved the problem of its meaning.
- "So the boss crawled?" I said, as he came in.
- He gave a light, confident laugh. I had not seen him, as I say, for
- some time, and I was struck by the alteration in his appearance. In
- what exactly this alteration consisted I could not at first have said;
- but gradually it began to impress itself on me that his eye was
- brighter, his jaw squarer, his carriage a trifle more upright than it
- had been. But it was his eye that struck me most forcibly. The George
- Mackintosh I had known had had a pleasing gaze, but, though frank and
- agreeable, it had never been more dynamic than a fried egg. This new
- George had an eye that was a combination of a gimlet and a searchlight.
- Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I imagine, must have been somewhat
- similarly equipped. The Ancient Mariner stopped a wedding guest on his
- way to a wedding; George Mackintosh gave me the impression that he
- could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express on its way to Penzance.
- Self-confidence--aye, and more than self-confidence--a sort of sinful,
- overbearing swank seemed to exude from his very pores.
- "Crawled?" he said. "Well, he didn't actually lick my boots, because I
- saw him coming and side-stepped; but he did everything short of that. I
- hadn't been talking an hour when----"
- "An hour!" I gasped. "Did you talk for an hour?"
- "Certainly. You wouldn't have had me be abrupt, would you? I went into
- his private office and found him alone. I think at first he would have
- been just as well pleased if I had retired. In fact, he said as much.
- But I soon adjusted that outlook. I took a seat and a cigarette, and
- then I started to sketch out for him the history of my connection with
- the firm. He began to wilt before the end of the first ten minutes. At
- the quarter of an hour mark he was looking at me like a lost dog that's
- just found its owner. By the half-hour he was making little bleating
- noises and massaging my coat-sleeve. And when, after perhaps an hour
- and a half, I came to my peroration and suggested a rise, he choked
- back a sob, gave me double what I had asked, and invited me to dine at
- his club next Tuesday. I'm a little sorry now I cut the thing so short.
- A few minutes more, and I fancy he would have given me his
- sock-suspenders and made over his life-insurance in my favour."
- "Well," I said, as soon as I could speak, for I was finding my young
- friend a trifle overpowering, "this is most satisfactory."
- "So-so," said George. "Not un-so-so. A man wants an addition to his
- income when he is going to get married."
- "Ah!" I said. "That, of course, will be the real test."
- "What do you mean?"
- "Why, when you propose to Celia Tennant. You remember you were saying
- when we spoke of this before--"
- "Oh, that!" said George, carelessly. "I've arranged all that."
- "What!"
- "Oh, yes. On my way up from the station. I looked in on Celia about an
- hour ago, and it's all settled."
- "Amazing!"
- "Well, I don't know. I just put the thing to her, and she seemed to see
- it."
- "I congratulate you. So now, like Alexander, you have no more worlds to
- conquer."
- "Well, I don't know so much about that," said George. "The way it looks to
- me is that I'm just starting. This eloquence is a thing that rather grows
- on one. You didn't hear about my after-dinner speech at the anniversary
- banquet of the firm, I suppose? My dear fellow, a riot! A positive
- stampede. Had 'em laughing and then crying and then laughing again and
- then crying once more till six of 'em had to be led out and the rest down
- with hiccoughs. Napkins waving ... three tables broken ... waiters in
- hysterics. I tell you, I played on them as on a stringed instrument...."
- "Can you play on a stringed instrument?"
- "As it happens, no. But as I would have played on a stringed instrument
- if I could play on a stringed instrument. Wonderful sense of power it
- gives you. I mean to go in pretty largely for that sort of thing in
- future."
- "You must not let it interfere with your golf."
- He gave a laugh which turned my blood cold.
- "Golf!" he said. "After all, what is golf? Just pushing a small ball
- into a hole. A child could do it. Indeed, children have done it with
- great success. I see an infant of fourteen has just won some sort of
- championship. Could that stripling convulse a roomful of banqueters? I
- think not! To sway your fellow-men with a word, to hold them with a
- gesture ... that is the real salt of life. I don't suppose I shall play
- much more golf now. I'm making arrangements for a lecturing-tour, and
- I'm booked up for fifteen lunches already."
- Those were his words. A man who had once done the lake-hole in one. A
- man whom the committee were grooming for the amateur championship. I am
- no weakling, but I confess they sent a chill shiver down my spine.
- * * * * *
- George Mackintosh did not, I am glad to say, carry out his mad project
- to the letter. He did not altogether sever himself from golf. He was
- still to be seen occasionally on the links. But now--and I know of
- nothing more tragic that can befall a man--he found himself gradually
- shunned, he who in the days of his sanity had been besieged with more
- offers of games than he could manage to accept. Men simply would not
- stand his incessant flow of talk. One by one they dropped off, until
- the only person he could find to go round with him was old Major
- Moseby, whose hearing completely petered out as long ago as the year
- '98. And, of course, Celia Tennant would play with him occasionally;
- but it seemed to me that even she, greatly as no doubt she loved him,
- was beginning to crack under the strain.
- So surely had I read the pallor of her face and the wild look of dumb
- agony in her eyes that I was not surprised when, as I sat one morning
- in my garden reading Ray on Taking Turf, my man announced her name. I
- had been half expecting her to come to me for advice and consolation,
- for I had known her ever since she was a child. It was I who had given
- her her first driver and taught her infant lips to lisp "Fore!" It is
- not easy to lisp the word "Fore!" but I had taught her to do it, and
- this constituted a bond between us which had been strengthened rather
- than weakened by the passage of time.
- She sat down on the grass beside my chair, and looked up at my face in
- silent pain. We had known each other so long that I know that it was
- not my face that pained her, but rather some unspoken _malaise_ of
- the soul. I waited for her to speak, and suddenly she burst out
- impetuously as though she could hold back her sorrow no longer.
- "Oh, I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"
- "You mean...?" I said, though I knew only too well.
- "This horrible obsession of poor George's," she cried passionately. "I
- don't think he has stopped talking once since we have been engaged."
- "He _is_ chatty," I agreed. "Has he told you the story about the
- Irishman?"
- "Half a dozen times. And the one about the Swede oftener than that. But
- I would not mind an occasional anecdote. Women have to learn to bear
- anecdotes from the men they love. It is the curse of Eve. It is his
- incessant easy flow of chatter on all topics that is undermining even
- my devotion."
- "But surely, when he proposed to you, he must have given you an inkling
- of the truth. He only hinted at it when he spoke to me, but I gather
- that he was eloquent."
- "When he proposed," said Celia dreamily, "he was wonderful. He spoke
- for twenty minutes without stopping. He said I was the essence of his
- every hope, the tree on which the fruit of his life grew; his Present,
- his Future, his Past ... oh, and all that sort of thing. If he would
- only confine his conversation now to remarks of a similar nature, I
- could listen to him all day long. But he doesn't. He talks politics and
- statistics and philosophy and ... oh, and everything. He makes my head
- ache."
- "And your heart also, I fear," I said gravely.
- "I love him!" she replied simply. "In spite of everything, I love him
- dearly. But what to do? What to do? I have an awful fear that when we
- are getting married instead of answering 'I will,' he will go into the
- pulpit and deliver an address on Marriage Ceremonies of All Ages. The
- world to him is a vast lecture-platform. He looks on life as one long
- after-dinner, with himself as the principal speaker of the evening. It
- is breaking my heart. I see him shunned by his former friends. Shunned!
- They run a mile when they see him coming. The mere sound of his voice
- outside the club-house is enough to send brave men diving for safety
- beneath the sofas. Can you wonder that I am in despair? What have I to
- live for?"
- "There is always golf."
- "Yes, there is always golf," she whispered bravely.
- "Come and have a round this afternoon."
- "I had promised to go for a walk ..." She shuddered, then pulled herself
- together. "... for a walk with George."
- I hesitated for a moment.
- "Bring him along," I said, and patted her hand. "It may be that
- together we shall find an opportunity of reasoning with him."
- She shook her head.
- "You can't reason with George. He never stops talking long enough to
- give you time."
- "Nevertheless, there is no harm in trying. I have an idea that this
- malady of his is not permanent and incurable. The very violence with
- which the germ of loquacity has attacked him gives me hope. You must
- remember that before this seizure he was rather a noticeably silent
- man. Sometimes I think that it is just Nature's way of restoring the
- average, and that soon the fever may burn itself out. Or it may be that
- a sudden shock ... At any rate, have courage."
- "I will try to be brave."
- "Capital! At half-past two on the first tee, then."
- "You will have to give me a stroke on the third, ninth, twelfth,
- fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth," she said, with a quaver in her
- voice. "My golf has fallen off rather lately."
- I patted her hand again.
- "I understand," I said gently. "I understand."
- * * * * *
- The steady drone of a baritone voice as I alighted from my car and
- approached the first tee told me that George had not forgotten the
- tryst. He was sitting on the stone seat under the chestnut-tree,
- speaking a few well-chosen words on the Labour Movement.
- "To what conclusion, then, do we come?" he was saying. "We come to the
- foregone and inevitable conclusion that...."
- "Good afternoon, George," I said.
- He nodded briefly, but without verbal salutation. He seemed to regard
- my remark as he would have regarded the unmannerly heckling of some one
- at the back of the hall. He proceeded evenly with his speech, and was
- still talking when Celia addressed her ball and drove off. Her drive,
- coinciding with a sharp rhetorical question from George, wavered in
- mid-air, and the ball trickled off into the rough half-way down the
- hill. I can see the poor girl's tortured face even now. But she
- breathed no word of reproach. Such is the miracle of women's love.
- "Where you went wrong there," said George, breaking off his remarks on
- Labour, "was that you have not studied the dynamics of golf
- sufficiently. You did not pivot properly. You allowed your left heel to
- point down the course when you were at the top of your swing. This
- makes for instability and loss of distance. The fundamental law of the
- dynamics of golf is that the left foot shall be solidly on the ground
- at the moment of impact. If you allow your heel to point down the
- course, it is almost impossible to bring it back in time to make the
- foot a solid fulcrum."
- I drove, and managed to clear the rough and reach the fairway. But it
- was not one of my best drives. George Mackintosh, I confess, had
- unnerved me. The feeling he gave me resembled the self-conscious panic
- which I used to experience in my childhood when informed that there was
- One Awful Eye that watched my every movement and saw my every act. It
- was only the fact that poor Celia appeared even more affected by his
- espionage that enabled me to win the first hole in seven.
- On the way to the second tee George discoursed on the beauties of
- Nature, pointing out at considerable length how exquisitely the silver
- glitter of the lake harmonized with the vivid emerald turf near the
- hole and the duller green of the rough beyond it. As Celia teed up her
- ball, he directed her attention to the golden glory of the sand-pit to
- the left of the flag. It was not the spirit in which to approach the
- lake-hole, and I was not surprised when the unfortunate girl's ball
- fell with a sickening plop half-way across the water.
- "Where you went wrong there," said George, "was that you made the
- stroke a sudden heave instead of a smooth, snappy flick of the wrists.
- Pressing is always bad, but with the mashie----"
- "I think I will give you this hole," said Celia to me, for my shot had
- cleared the water and was lying on the edge of the green. "I wish I
- hadn't used a new ball."
- "The price of golf-balls," said George, as we started to round the
- lake, "is a matter to which economists should give some attention. I am
- credibly informed that rubber at the present time is exceptionally
- cheap. Yet we see no decrease in the price of golf-balls, which, as I
- need scarcely inform you, are rubber-cored. Why should this be so? You
- will say that the wages of skilled labour have gone up. True. But----"
- "One moment, George, while I drive," I said. For we had now arrived at
- the third tee.
- "A curious thing, concentration," said George, "and why certain
- phenomena should prevent us from focusing our attention---- This brings
- me to the vexed question of sleep. Why is it that we are able to sleep
- through some vast convulsion of Nature when a dripping tap is enough to
- keep us awake? I am told that there were people who slumbered
- peacefully through the San Francisco earthquake, merely stirring
- drowsily from time to time to tell an imaginary person to leave it on
- the mat. Yet these same people----"
- Celia's drive bounded into the deep ravine which yawns some fifty yards
- from the tee. A low moan escaped her.
- "Where you went wrong there----" said George.
- "I know," said Celia. "I lifted my head."
- I had never heard her speak so abruptly before. Her manner, in a girl
- less noticeably pretty, might almost have been called snappish. George,
- however, did not appear to have noticed anything amiss. He filled his
- pipe and followed her into the ravine.
- "Remarkable," he said, "how fundamental a principle of golf is this
- keeping the head still. You will hear professionals tell their pupils
- to keep their eye on the ball. Keeping the eye on the ball is only a
- secondary matter. What they really mean is that the head should be kept
- rigid, as otherwise it is impossible to----"
- His voice died away. I had sliced my drive into the woods on the right,
- and after playing another had gone off to try to find my ball, leaving
- Celia and George in the ravine behind me. My last glimpse of them
- showed me that her ball had fallen into a stone-studded cavity in the
- side of the hill, and she was drawing her niblick from her bag as I
- passed out of sight. George's voice, blurred by distance to a
- monotonous murmur, followed me until I was out of earshot.
- I was just about to give up the hunt for my ball in despair, when I
- heard Celia's voice calling to me from the edge of the undergrowth.
- There was a sharp note in it which startled me.
- I came out, trailing a portion of some unknown shrub which had twined
- itself about my ankle.
- "Yes?" I said, picking twigs out of my hair.
- "I want your advice," said Celia.
- "Certainly. What is the trouble? By the way," I said, looking round,
- "where is your _fiance_?"
- "I have no _fiance_," she said, in a dull, hard voice.
- "You have broken off the engagement?"
- "Not exactly. And yet--well, I suppose it amounts to that."
- "I don't quite understand."
- "Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I
- rather think I've killed George."
- "Killed him, eh?"
- It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was
- presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of
- national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our
- beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody
- before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George
- Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had
- taken a woman's intuition to see it.
- "I killed him with my niblick," said Celia.
- I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a
- niblick shot.
- "I had just made my eleventh attempt to get out of that ravine," the
- girl went on, "with George talking all the time about the recent
- excavations in Egypt, when suddenly--you know what it is when something
- seems to snap----"
- "I had the experience with my shoe-lace only this morning."
- "Yes, it was like that. Sharp--sudden--happening all in a moment. I
- suppose I must have said something, for George stopped talking about
- Egypt and said that he was reminded by a remark of the last speaker's
- of a certain Irishman-----"
- I pressed her hand.
- "Don't go on if it hurts you," I said, gently.
- "Well, there is very little more to tell. He bent his head to light his
- pipe, and well--the temptation was too much for me. That's all."
- "You were quite right."
- "You really think so?"
- "I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation,
- once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular woman in Israel."
- "I wish I could think so too," she murmured. "At the moment, you know,
- I was conscious of nothing but an awful elation. But--but--oh, he was
- such a darling before he got this dreadful affliction. I can't help
- thinking of G-George as he used to be."
- She burst into a torrent of sobs.
- "Would you care for me to view the remains?" I said.
- "Perhaps it would be as well."
- She led me silently into the ravine. George Mackintosh was lying on his
- back where he had fallen.
- "There!" said Celia.
- And, as she spoke, George Mackintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and
- sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him.
- George blinked once or twice and looked about him dazedly.
- "Save the women and children!" he cried. "I can swim."
- "Oh, George!" said Celia.
- "Feeling a little better?" I asked.
- "A little. How many people were hurt?"
- "Hurt?"
- "When the express ran into us." He cast another glance around him.
- "Why, how did I get here?"
- "You were here all the time," I said.
- "Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?"
- Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.
- "Oh, George!" she said, again.
- He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.
- "Brave little woman!" he said. "Brave little woman! She stuck by me all
- through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the
- explosion?"
- It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be
- avoided by the exercise of a little tact.
- "Well, some say one thing and some another," I said. "Whether it was a
- spark from a cigarette----"
- Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this
- well-intentioned subterfuge.
- "I hit you, George!"
- "Hit me?" he repeated, curiously. "What with? The Eiffel Tower?"
- "With my niblick."
- "You hit me with your niblick? But why?"
- She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.
- "Because you wouldn't stop talking."
- He gaped.
- "Me!" he said. "_I_ wouldn't stop talking! But I hardly talk at
- all. I'm noted for it."
- Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened.
- The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in
- such a way as to effect a complete cure. I have not the technical
- knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain.
- "Lately, my dear fellow," I assured him, "you have dropped into the
- habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this
- afternoon you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation!"
- "Me! On the links! It isn't possible."
- "It is only too true, I fear. And that is why this brave girl hit you
- with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was
- making her eleventh shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she
- took what she considered the necessary steps."
- "Can you ever forgive me, George?" cried Celia.
- George Mackintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face.
- "So I did! It's all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens!"
- "_Can_ you forgive me, George?" cried Celia again.
- He took her hand in his.
- "Forgive you?" he muttered. "Can _you_ forgive _me?_ Me--a
- tee-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form
- of life known to science! I am unclean, unclean!"
- "It's only a little mud, dearest," said Celia, looking at the sleeve of
- his coat. "It will brush off when it's dry."
- "How can you link your lot with a man who talks when people are making
- their shots?"
- "You will never do it again."
- "But I have done it. And you stuck to me all through! Oh, Celia!"
- "I loved you, George!"
- The man seemed to swell with a sudden emotion. His eye lit up, and he
- thrust one hand into the breast of his coat while he raised the other
- in a sweeping gesture. For an instant he appeared on the verge of a
- flood of eloquence. And then, as if he had been made sharply aware of
- what it was that he intended to do, he suddenly sagged. The gleam died
- out of his eyes. He lowered his hand.
- "Well, I must say that was rather decent of you," he said.
- A lame speech, but one that brought an infinite joy to both his
- hearers. For it showed that George Mackintosh was cured beyond
- possibility of relapse.
- "Yes, I must say you are rather a corker," he added.
- "George!" cried Celia.
- I said nothing, but I clasped his hand; and then, taking my clubs, I
- retired. When I looked round she was still in his arms. I left them
- there, alone together in the great silence.
- * * * * *
- And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that a cure is possible,
- though it needs a woman's gentle hand to bring it about. And how few
- women are capable of doing what Celia Tennant did. Apart from the
- difficulty of summoning up the necessary resolution, an act like hers
- requires a straight eye and a pair of strong and supple wrists. It
- seems to me that for the ordinary talking golfer there is no hope. And
- the race seems to be getting more numerous every day. Yet the finest
- golfers are always the least loquacious. It is related of the
- illustrious Sandy McHoots that when, on the occasion of his winning the
- British Open Championship, he was interviewed by reporters from the
- leading daily papers as to his views on Tariff Reform, Bimetallism, the
- Trial by Jury System, and the Modern Craze for Dancing, all they could
- extract from him was the single word "Mphm!" Having uttered which, he
- shouldered his bag and went home to tea. A great man. I wish there were
- more like him.
- 6
- _Ordeal By Golf_
- A pleasant breeze played among the trees on the terrace outside the
- Marvis Bay Golf and Country Club. It ruffled the leaves and cooled the
- forehead of the Oldest Member, who, as was his custom of a Saturday
- afternoon, sat in the shade on a rocking-chair, observing the younger
- generation as it hooked and sliced in the valley below. The eye of the
- Oldest Member was thoughtful and reflective. When it looked into yours
- you saw in it that perfect peace, that peace beyond understanding,
- which comes at its maximum only to the man who has given up golf.
- The Oldest Member has not played golf since the rubber-cored ball
- superseded the old dignified gutty. But as a spectator and philosopher
- he still finds pleasure in the pastime. He is watching it now with keen
- interest. His gaze, passing from the lemonade which he is sucking
- through a straw, rests upon the Saturday foursome which is struggling
- raggedly up the hill to the ninth green. Like all Saturday foursomes,
- it is in difficulties. One of the patients is zigzagging about the
- fairway like a liner pursued by submarines. Two others seem to be
- digging for buried treasure, unless--it is too far off to be
- certain--they are killing snakes. The remaining cripple, who has just
- foozled a mashie-shot, is blaming his caddie. His voice, as he upbraids
- the innocent child for breathing during his up-swing, comes clearly up
- the hill.
- The Oldest Member sighs. His lemonade gives a sympathetic gurgle. He
- puts it down on the table.
- * * * * *
- How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing
- temperament! How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on
- Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a
- pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for
- the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his
- temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I
- may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees; but I
- did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no
- good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one's temper at
- golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the
- spirit of Marcus Aurelius. "Whatever may befall thee," says that great
- man in his "Meditations", "it was preordained for thee from
- everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by
- nature to bear." I like to think that this noble thought came to him
- after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he
- jotted it down on the back of his score-card. For there can be no doubt
- that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not
- had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have
- written the words: "That which makes the man no worse than he was makes
- life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within." Yes, Marcus
- Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to
- indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The
- niblick was his club.
- Speaking of Marcus Aurelius and the golfing temperament recalls to my
- mind the case of young Mitchell Holmes. Mitchell, when I knew him
- first, was a promising young man with a future before him in the
- Paterson Dyeing and Refining Company, of which my old friend, Alexander
- Paterson, was the president. He had many engaging qualities--among them
- an unquestioned ability to imitate a bulldog quarrelling with a
- Pekingese in a way which had to be heard to be believed. It was a gift
- which made him much in demand at social gatherings in the
- neighbourhood, marking him off from other young men who could only
- almost play the mandolin or recite bits of Gunga Din; and no doubt it
- was this talent of his which first sowed the seeds of love in the heart
- of Millicent Boyd. Women are essentially hero-worshippers, and when a
- warm-hearted girl like Millicent has heard a personable young man
- imitating a bulldog and a Pekingese to the applause of a crowded
- drawing-room, and has been able to detect the exact point at which the
- Pekingese leaves off and the bulldog begins, she can never feel quite
- the same to other men. In short, Mitchell and Millicent were engaged,
- and were only waiting to be married till the former could bite the
- Dyeing and Refining Company's ear for a bit of extra salary.
- Mitchell Holmes had only one fault. He lost his temper when playing
- golf. He seldom played a round without becoming piqued, peeved, or--in
- many cases--chagrined. The caddies on our links, it was said, could
- always worst other small boys in verbal argument by calling them some
- of the things they had heard Mitchell call his ball on discovering it
- in a cuppy lie. He had a great gift of language, and he used it
- unsparingly. I will admit that there was some excuse for the man. He
- had the makings of a brilliant golfer, but a combination of bad luck
- and inconsistent play invariably robbed him of the fruits of his skill.
- He was the sort of player who does the first two holes in one under
- bogey and then takes an eleven at the third. The least thing upset him
- on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the
- butterflies in the adjoining meadows.
- It seemed hardly likely that this one kink in an otherwise admirable
- character would ever seriously affect his working or professional life,
- but it did. One evening, as I was sitting in my garden, Alexander
- Paterson was announced. A glance at his face told me that he had come
- to ask my advice. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded me as one capable of
- giving advice. It was I who had changed the whole current of his life
- by counselling him to leave the wood in his bag and take a driving-iron
- off the tee; and in one or two other matters, like the choice of a
- putter (so much more important than the choice of a wife), I had been
- of assistance to him.
- Alexander sat down and fanned himself with his hat, for the evening was
- warm. Perplexity was written upon his fine face.
- "I don't know what to do," he said.
- "Keep the head still--slow back--don't press," I said, gravely. There
- is no better rule for a happy and successful life.
- "It's nothing to do with golf this time," he said. "It's about the
- treasurership of my company. Old Smithers retires next week, and I've
- got to find a man to fill his place."
- "That should be easy. You have simply to select the most deserving from
- among your other employees."
- "But which _is_ the most deserving? That's the point. There are
- two men who are capable of holding the job quite adequately. But then I
- realize how little I know of their real characters. It is the
- treasurership, you understand, which has to be filled. Now, a man who
- was quite good at another job might easily get wrong ideas into his
- head when he became a treasurer. He would have the handling of large
- sums of money. In other words, a man who in ordinary circumstances had
- never been conscious of any desire to visit the more distant portions
- of South America might feel the urge, so to speak, shortly after he
- became a treasurer. That is my difficulty. Of course, one always takes
- a sporting chance with any treasurer; but how am I to find out which of
- these two men would give me the more reasonable opportunity of keeping
- some of my money?"
- I did not hesitate a moment. I held strong views on the subject of
- character-testing.
- "The only way," I said to Alexander, "of really finding out a man's
- true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does
- the cloven hoof so quickly display itself. I employed a lawyer for
- years, until one day I saw him kick his ball out of a heel-mark. I
- removed my business from his charge next morning. He has not yet run
- off with any trust-funds, but there is a nasty gleam in his eye, and I
- am convinced that it is only a question of time. Golf, my dear fellow,
- is the infallible test. The man who can go into a patch of rough alone,
- with the knowledge that only God is watching him, and play his ball
- where it lies, is the man who will serve you faithfully and well. The
- man who can smile bravely when his putt is diverted by one of those
- beastly wormcasts is pure gold right through. But the man who is hasty,
- unbalanced, and violent on the links will display the same qualities in
- the wider field of everyday life. You don't want an unbalanced
- treasurer do you?"
- "Not if his books are likely to catch the complaint."
- "They are sure to. Statisticians estimate that the average of crime
- among good golfers is lower than in any class of the community except
- possibly bishops. Since Willie Park won the first championship at
- Prestwick in the year 1860 there has, I believe, been no instance of an
- Open Champion spending a day in prison. Whereas the bad golfers--and by
- bad I do not mean incompetent, but black-souled--the men who fail to
- count a stroke when they miss the globe; the men who never replace a
- divot; the men who talk while their opponent is driving; and the men
- who let their angry passions rise--these are in and out of Wormwood
- Scrubbs all the time. They find it hardly worth while to get their hair
- cut in their brief intervals of liberty."
- Alexander was visibly impressed.
- "That sounds sensible, by George!" he said.
- "It is sensible."
- "I'll do it! Honestly, I can't see any other way of deciding between
- Holmes and Dixon."
- I started.
- "Holmes? Not Mitchell Holmes?"
- "Yes. Of course you must know him? He lives here, I believe."
- "And by Dixon do you mean Rupert Dixon?"
- "That's the man. Another neighbour of yours."
- I confess that my heart sank. It was as if my ball had fallen into the
- pit which my niblick had digged. I wished heartily that I had thought
- of waiting to ascertain the names of the two rivals before offering my
- scheme. I was extremely fond of Mitchell Holmes and of the girl to whom
- he was engaged to be married. Indeed, it was I who had sketched out a
- few rough notes for the lad to use when proposing; and results had
- shown that he had put my stuff across well. And I had listened many a
- time with a sympathetic ear to his hopes in the matter of securing a
- rise of salary which would enable him to get married. Somehow, when
- Alexander was talking, it had not occurred to me that young Holmes
- might be in the running for so important an office as the
- treasurership. I had ruined the boy's chances. Ordeal by golf was the
- one test which he could not possibly undergo with success. Only a
- miracle could keep him from losing his temper, and I had expressly
- warned Alexander against such a man.
- When I thought of his rival my heart sank still more. Rupert Dixon was
- rather an unpleasant young man, but the worst of his enemies could not
- accuse him of not possessing the golfing temperament. From the drive
- off the tee to the holing of the final putt he was uniformly suave.
- * * * * *
- When Alexander had gone, I sat in thought for some time. I was faced
- with a problem. Strictly speaking, no doubt, I had no right to take
- sides; and, though secrecy had not been enjoined upon me in so many
- words, I was very well aware that Alexander was under the impression
- that I would keep the thing under my hat and not reveal to either party
- the test that awaited him. Each candidate was, of course, to remain
- ignorant that he was taking part in anything but a friendly game.
- But when I thought of the young couple whose future depended on this
- ordeal, I hesitated no longer. I put on my hat and went round to Miss
- Boyd's house, where I knew that Mitchell was to be found at this hour.
- The young couple were out in the porch, looking at the moon. They
- greeted me heartily, but their heartiness had rather a tinny sound, and
- I could see that on the whole they regarded me as one of those things
- which should not happen. But when I told my story their attitude
- changed. They began to look on me in the pleasanter light of a
- guardian, philosopher, and friend.
- "Wherever did Mr. Paterson get such a silly idea?" said Miss Boyd,
- indignantly. I had--from the best motives--concealed the source of the
- scheme. "It's ridiculous!"
- "Oh, I don't know," said Mitchell. "The old boy's crazy about golf.
- It's just the sort of scheme he would cook up. Well, it dishes
- _me_!"
- "Oh, come!" I said.
- "It's no good saying 'Oh, come!' You know perfectly well that I'm a
- frank, outspoken golfer. When my ball goes off nor'-nor'-east when I
- want it to go due west I can't help expressing an opinion about it. It
- is a curious phenomenon which calls for comment, and I give it.
- Similarly, when I top my drive, I have to go on record as saying that I
- did not do it intentionally. And it's just these trifles, as far as I
- can make out, that are going to decide the thing."
- "Couldn't you learn to control yourself on the links, Mitchell,
- darling?" asked Millicent. "After all, golf is only a game!"
- Mitchell's eyes met mine, and I have no doubt that mine showed just the
- same look of horror which I saw in his. Women say these things without
- thinking. It does not mean that there is any kink in their character.
- They simply don't realize what they are saying.
- "Hush!" said Mitchell, huskily, patting her hand and overcoming his
- emotion with a strong effort. "Hush, dearest!"
- * * * * *
- Two or three days later I met Millicent coming from the post-office.
- There was a new light of happiness in her eyes, and her face was
- glowing.
- "Such a splendid thing has happened," she said. "After Mitchell left
- that night I happened to be glancing through a magazine, and I came
- across a wonderful advertisement. It began by saying that all the great
- men in history owed their success to being able to control themselves,
- and that Napoleon wouldn't have amounted to anything if he had not
- curbed his fiery nature, and then it said that we can all be like
- Napoleon if we fill in the accompanying blank order-form for Professor
- Orlando Rollitt's wonderful book, 'Are You Your Own Master?' absolutely
- free for five days and then seven shillings, but you must write at once
- because the demand is enormous and pretty soon it may be too late. I
- wrote at once, and luckily I was in time, because Professor Rollitt did
- have a copy left, and it's just arrived. I've been looking through it,
- and it seems splendid."
- She held out a small volume. I glanced at it. There was a frontispiece
- showing a signed photograph of Professor Orlando Rollitt controlling
- himself in spite of having long white whiskers, and then some reading
- matter, printed between wide margins. One look at the book told me the
- professor's methods. To be brief, he had simply swiped Marcus
- Aurelius's best stuff, the copyright having expired some two thousand
- years ago, and was retailing it as his own. I did not mention this to
- Millicent. It was no affair of mine. Presumably, however obscure the
- necessity, Professor Rollitt had to live.
- "I'm going to start Mitchell on it today. Don't you think this is good?
- 'Thou seest how few be the things which if a man has at his command his
- life flows gently on and is divine.' I think it will be wonderful if
- Mitchell's life flows gently on and is divine for seven shillings,
- don't you?"
- * * * * *
- At the club-house that evening I encountered Rupert Dixon. He was
- emerging from a shower-bath, and looked as pleased with himself as
- usual.
- "Just been going round with old Paterson," he said. "He was asking
- after you. He's gone back to town in his car."
- I was thrilled. So the test had begun!
- "How did you come out?" I asked.
- Rupert Dixon smirked. A smirking man, wrapped in a bath towel, with a
- wisp of wet hair over one eye, is a repellent sight.
- "Oh, pretty well. I won by six and five. In spite of having poisonous
- luck."
- I felt a gleam of hope at these last words.
- "Oh, you had bad luck?"
- "The worst. I over-shot the green at the third with the best
- brassey-shot I've ever made in my life--and that's saying a lot--and
- lost my ball in the rough beyond it."
- "And I suppose you let yourself go, eh?"
- "Let myself go?"
- "I take it that you made some sort of demonstration?"
- "Oh, no. Losing your temper doesn't get you anywhere at golf. It only
- spoils your next shot."
- I went away heavy-hearted. Dixon had plainly come through the ordeal as
- well as any man could have done. I expected to hear every day that the
- vacant treasurership had been filled, and that Mitchell had not even
- been called upon to play his test round. I suppose, however, that
- Alexander Paterson felt that it would be unfair to the other competitor
- not to give him his chance, for the next I heard of the matter was when
- Mitchell Holmes rang me up on the Friday and asked me if I would
- accompany him round the links next day in the match he was playing with
- Alexander, and give him my moral support.
- "I shall need it," he said. "I don't mind telling you I'm pretty
- nervous. I wish I had had longer to get the stranglehold on that 'Are
- You Your Own Master?' stuff. I can see, of course, that it is the real
- tabasco from start to finish, and absolutely as mother makes it, but
- the trouble is I've only had a few days to soak it into my system. It's
- like trying to patch up a motor car with string. You never know when
- the thing will break down. Heaven knows what will happen if I sink a
- ball at the water-hole. And something seems to tell me I am going to do
- it."
- There was a silence for a moment.
- "Do you believe in dreams?" asked Mitchell.
- "Believe in what?"
- "Dreams."
- "What about them?"
- "I said, 'Do you believe in dreams?' Because last night I dreamed that
- I was playing in the final of the Open Championship, and I got into the
- rough, and there was a cow there, and the cow looked at me in a sad
- sort of way and said, 'Why don't you use the two-V grip instead of the
- interlocking?' At the time it seemed an odd sort of thing to happen,
- but I've been thinking it over and I wonder if there isn't something in
- it. These things must be sent to us for a purpose."
- "You can't change your grip on the day of an important match."
- "I suppose not. The fact is, I'm a bit jumpy, or I wouldn't have
- mentioned it. Oh, well! See you tomorrow at two."
- * * * * *
- The day was bright and sunny, but a tricky cross-wind was blowing when
- I reached the club-house. Alexander Paterson was there, practising
- swings on the first tee; and almost immediately Mitchell Holmes
- arrived, accompanied by Millicent.
- "Perhaps," said Alexander, "we had better be getting under way. Shall I
- take the honour?"
- "Certainly," said Mitchell.
- Alexander teed up his ball.
- Alexander Paterson has always been a careful rather than a dashing
- player. It is his custom, a sort of ritual, to take two measured
- practice-swings before addressing the ball, even on the putting-green.
- When he does address the ball he shuffles his feet for a moment or two,
- then pauses, and scans the horizon in a suspicious sort of way, as if
- he had been expecting it to play some sort of a trick on him when he
- was not looking. A careful inspection seems to convince him of the
- horizon's _bona fides_, and he turns his attention to the ball
- again. He shuffles his feet once more, then raises his club. He waggles
- the club smartly over the ball three times, then lays it behind the
- globule. At this point he suddenly peers at the horizon again, in the
- apparent hope of catching it off its guard. This done, he raises his
- club very slowly, brings it back very slowly till it almost touches the
- ball, raises it again, brings it down again, raises it once more, and
- brings it down for the third time. He then stands motionless, wrapped
- in thought, like some Indian fakir contemplating the infinite. Then he
- raises his club again and replaces it behind the ball. Finally he
- quivers all over, swings very slowly back, and drives the ball for
- about a hundred and fifty yards in a dead straight line.
- It is a method of procedure which proves sometimes a little
- exasperating to the highly strung, and I watched Mitchell's face
- anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The
- unhappy lad had blenched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one
- in pain.
- "Does he always do that?" he whispered.
- "Always," I replied.
- "Then I'm done for! No human being could play golf against a one-ring
- circus like that without blowing up!"
- I said nothing. It was, I feared, only too true. Well-poised as I am, I
- had long since been compelled to give up playing with Alexander
- Paterson, much as I esteemed him. It was a choice between that and
- resigning from the Baptist Church.
- At this moment Millicent spoke. There was an open book in her hand. I
- recognized it as the life-work of Professor Rollitt.
- "Think on this doctrine," she said, in her soft, modulated voice, "that
- to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without
- intending it."
- Mitchell nodded briefly, and walked to the tee with a firm step.
- "Before you drive, darling," said Millicent, "remember this. Let no act
- be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished
- rules that govern its kind."
- The next moment Mitchell's ball was shooting through the air, to come
- to rest two hundred yards down the course. It was a magnificent drive.
- He had followed the counsel of Marcus Aurelius to the letter.
- An admirable iron-shot put him in reasonable proximity to the pin, and
- he holed out in one under bogey with one of the nicest putts I have
- ever beheld. And when at the next hole, the dangerous water-hole, his
- ball soared over the pond and lay safe, giving him bogey for the hole,
- I began for the first time to breathe freely. Every golfer has his day,
- and this was plainly Mitchell's. He was playing faultless golf. If he
- could continue in this vein, his unfortunate failing would have no
- chance to show itself.
- The third hole is long and tricky. You drive over a ravine--or possibly
- into it. In the latter event you breathe a prayer and call for your
- niblick. But, once over the ravine, there is nothing to disturb the
- equanimity. Bogey is five, and a good drive, followed by a
- brassey-shot, will put you within easy mashie-distance of the green.
- Mitchell cleared the ravine by a hundred and twenty yards. He strolled
- back to me, and watched Alexander go through his ritual with an
- indulgent smile. I knew just how he was feeling. Never does the world
- seem so sweet and fair and the foibles of our fellow human beings so
- little irritating as when we have just swatted the pill right on the
- spot.
- "I can't see why he does it," said Mitchell, eyeing Alexander with a
- toleration that almost amounted to affection. "If I did all those
- Swedish exercises before I drove, I should forget what I had come out
- for and go home." Alexander concluded the movements, and landed a bare
- three yards on the other side of the ravine. "He's what you would call
- a steady performer, isn't he? Never varies!"
- Mitchell won the hole comfortably. There was a jauntiness about his
- stance on the fourth tee which made me a little uneasy. Over-confidence
- at golf is almost as bad as timidity.
- My apprehensions were justified. Mitchell topped his ball. It rolled
- twenty yards into the rough, and nestled under a dock-leaf. His mouth
- opened, then closed with a snap. He came over to where Millicent and I
- were standing.
- "I didn't say it!" he said. "What on earth happened then?"
- "Search men's governing principles," said Millicent, "and consider the
- wise, what they shun and what they cleave to."
- "Exactly," I said. "You swayed your body."
- "And now I've got to go and look for that infernal ball."
- "Never mind, darling," said Millicent. "Nothing has such power to
- broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly
- all that comes under thy observation in life."
- "Besides," I said, "you're three up."
- "I shan't be after this hole."
- He was right. Alexander won it in five, one above bogey, and regained
- the honour.
- Mitchell was a trifle shaken. His play no longer had its first careless
- vigour. He lost the next hole, halved the sixth, lost the short
- seventh, and then, rallying, halved the eighth.
- The ninth hole, like so many on our links, can be a perfectly simple
- four, although the rolling nature of the green makes bogey always a
- somewhat doubtful feat; but, on the other hand, if you foozle your
- drive, you can easily achieve double figures. The tee is on the farther
- side of the pond, beyond the bridge, where the water narrows almost to
- the dimensions of a brook. You drive across this water and over a
- tangle of trees and under-growth on the other bank. The distance to the
- fairway cannot be more than sixty yards, for the hazard is purely a
- mental one, and yet how many fair hopes have been wrecked there!
- Alexander cleared the obstacles comfortably with his customary short,
- straight drive, and Mitchell advanced to the tee.
- I think the loss of the honour had been preying on his mind. He seemed
- nervous. His up-swing was shaky, and he swayed back perceptibly. He
- made a lunge at the ball, sliced it, and it struck a tree on the other
- side of the water and fell in the long grass. We crossed the bridge to
- look for it; and it was here that the effect of Professor Rollitt began
- definitely to wane.
- "Why on earth don't they mow this darned stuff?" demanded Mitchell,
- querulously, as he beat about the grass with his niblick.
- "You have to have rough on a course," I ventured.
- "Whatever happens at all," said Millicent, "happens as it should. Thou
- wilt find this true if thou shouldst watch narrowly."
- "That's all very well," said Mitchell, watching narrowly in a clump of
- weeds but seeming unconvinced. "I believe the Greens Committee run this
- bally club purely in the interests of the caddies. I believe they
- encourage lost balls, and go halves with the little beasts when they
- find them and sell them!"
- Millicent and I exchanged glances. There were tears in her eyes.
- "Oh, Mitchell! Remember Napoleon!"
- "Napoleon! What's Napoleon got to do with it? Napoleon never was
- expected to drive through a primeval forest. Besides, what did Napoleon
- ever do? Where did Napoleon get off, swanking round as if he amounted
- to something? Poor fish! All he ever did was to get hammered at
- Waterloo!"
- Alexander rejoined us. He had walked on to where his ball lay.
- "Can't find it, eh? Nasty bit of rough, this!"
- "No, I can't find it. But tomorrow some miserable, chinless,
- half-witted reptile of a caddie with pop eyes and eight hundred and
- thirty-seven pimples will find it, and will sell it to someone for
- sixpence! No, it was a brand-new ball. He'll probably get a shilling
- for it. That'll be sixpence for himself and sixpence for the Greens
- Committee. No wonder they're buying cars quicker than the makers can
- supply them. No wonder you see their wives going about in mink coats
- and pearl necklaces. Oh, dash it! I'll drop another!"
- "In that case," Alexander pointed out, "you will, of course, under the
- rules governing match-play, lose the hole."
- "All right, then. I'll give up the hole."
- "Then that, I think, makes me one up on the first nine," said
- Alexander. "Excellent! A very pleasant, even game."
- "Pleasant! On second thoughts I don't believe the Greens Committee let
- the wretched caddies get any of the loot. They hang round behind trees
- till the deal's concluded, and then sneak out and choke it out of
- them!"
- I saw Alexander raise his eyebrows. He walked up the hill to the next
- tee with me.
- "Rather a quick-tempered young fellow, Holmes!" he said, thoughtfully.
- "I should never have suspected it. It just shows how little one can
- know of a man, only meeting him in business hours."
- I tried to defend the poor lad.
- "He has an excellent heart, Alexander. But the fact is--we are such old
- friends that I know you will forgive my mentioning it--your style of
- play gets, I fancy, a little on his nerves."
- "My style of play? What's wrong with my style of play?"
- "Nothing is actually wrong with it, but to a young and ardent spirit
- there is apt to be something a trifle upsetting in being, compelled to
- watch a man play quite so slowly as you do. Come now, Alexander, as one
- friend to another, is it necessary to take two practice-swings before
- you putt?"
- "Dear, dear!" said Alexander. "You really mean to say that that upsets
- him? Well, I'm afraid I am too old to change my methods now."
- I had nothing more to say.
- As we reached the tenth tee, I saw that we were in for a few minutes'
- wait. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm. Millicent was standing beside
- me, dejection written on her face. Alexander and young Mitchell were
- some distance away from us.
- "Mitchell doesn't want me to come round the rest of the way with him,"
- she said, despondently. "He says I make him nervous."
- I shook my head.
- "That's bad! I was looking on you as a steadying influence."
- "I thought I was, too. But Mitchell says no. He says my being there
- keeps him from concentrating."
- "Then perhaps it would be better for you to remain in the club-house
- till we return. There is, I fear, dirty work ahead."
- A choking sob escaped the unhappy girl.
- "I'm afraid so. There is an apple tree near the thirteenth hole, and
- Mitchell's caddie is sure to start eating apples. I am thinking of what
- Mitchell will do when he hears the crunching when he is addressing his
- ball."
- "That is true."
- "Our only hope," she said, holding out Professor Rollitt's book, "is
- this. Will you please read him extracts when you see him getting
- nervous? We went through the book last night and marked all the
- passages in blue pencil which might prove helpful. You will see notes
- against them in the margin, showing when each is supposed to be used."
- It was a small favour to ask. I took the book and gripped her hand
- silently. Then I joined Alexander and Mitchell on the tenth tee.
- Mitchell was still continuing his speculations regarding the Greens
- Committee.
- "The hole after this one," he said, "used to be a short hole. There was
- no chance of losing a ball. Then, one day, the wife of one of the
- Greens Committee happened to mention that the baby needed new shoes, so
- now they've tacked on another hundred and fifty yards to it. You have
- to drive over the brow of a hill, and if you slice an eighth of an inch
- you get into a sort of No Man's Land, full of rocks and bushes and
- crevices and old pots and pans. The Greens Committee practically live
- there in the summer. You see them prowling round in groups, encouraging
- each other with merry cries as they fill their sacks. Well, I'm going
- to fool them today. I'm going to drive an old ball which is just
- hanging together by a thread. It'll come to pieces when they pick it
- up!"
- Golf, however, is a curious game--a game of fluctuations. One might
- have supposed that Mitchell, in such a frame of mind, would have
- continued to come to grief. But at the beginning of the second nine he
- once more found his form. A perfect drive put him in position to reach
- the tenth green with an iron-shot, and, though the ball was several
- yards from the hole, he laid it dead with his approach-putt and holed
- his second for a bogey four. Alexander could only achieve a five, so
- that they were all square again.
- The eleventh, the subject of Mitchell's recent criticism, is certainly
- a tricky hole, and it is true that a slice does land the player in
- grave difficulties. Today, however, both men kept their drives
- straight, and found no difficulty in securing fours.
- "A little more of this," said Mitchell, beaming, "and the Greens
- Committee will have to give up piracy and go back to work."
- The twelfth is a long, dog-leg hole, bogey five. Alexander plugged
- steadily round the bend, holing out in six, and Mitchell, whose second
- shot had landed him in some long grass, was obliged to use his niblick.
- He contrived, however, to halve the hole with a nicely-judged
- mashie-shot to the edge of the green.
- Alexander won the thirteenth. It is a three hundred and sixty yard
- hole, free from bunkers. It took Alexander three strokes to reach the
- green, but his third laid the ball dead; while Mitchell, who was on in
- two, required three putts.
- "That reminds me," said Alexander, chattily, "of a story I heard.
- Friend calls out to a beginner, 'How are you getting on, old man?' and
- the beginner says, 'Splendidly. I just made three perfect putts on the
- last green!'"
- Mitchell did not appear amused. I watched his face anxiously. He had
- made no remark, but the missed putt which would have saved the hole had
- been very short, and I feared the worst. There was a brooding look in
- his eye as we walked to the fourteenth tee.
- There are few more picturesque spots in the whole of the countryside
- than the neighbourhood of the fourteenth tee. It is a sight to charm
- the nature-lover's heart.
- But, if golf has a defect, it is that it prevents a man being a
- whole-hearted lover of nature. Where the layman sees waving grass and
- romantic tangles of undergrowth, your golfer beholds nothing but a
- nasty patch of rough from which he must divert his ball. The cry of the
- birds, wheeling against the sky, is to the golfer merely something that
- may put him off his putt. As a spectator, I am fond of the ravine at
- the bottom of the slope. It pleases the eye. But, as a golfer, I have
- frequently found it the very devil.
- The last hole had given Alexander the honour again. He drove even more
- deliberately than before. For quite half a minute he stood over his
- ball, pawing at it with his driving-iron like a cat investigating a
- tortoise. Finally he despatched it to one of the few safe spots on the
- hillside. The drive from this tee has to be carefully calculated, for,
- if it be too straight, it will catch the slope and roll down into the
- ravine.
- Mitchell addressed his ball. He swung up, and then, from immediately
- behind him came a sudden sharp crunching sound. I looked quickly in the
- direction whence it came. Mitchell's caddie, with a glassy look in his
- eyes, was gnawing a large apple. And even as I breathed a silent
- prayer, down came the driver, and the ball, with a terrible slice on
- it, hit the side of the hill and bounded into the ravine.
- There was a pause--a pause in which the world stood still. Mitchell
- dropped his club and turned. His face was working horribly.
- "Mitchell!" I cried. "My boy! Reflect! Be calm!"
- "Calm! What's the use of being calm when people are chewing apples in
- thousands all round you? What _is_ this, anyway--a golf match or a
- pleasant day's outing for the children of the poor? Apples! Go on, my
- boy, take another bite. Take several. Enjoy yourself! Never mind if it
- seems to cause me a fleeting annoyance. Go on with your lunch! You
- probably had a light breakfast, eh, and are feeling a little peckish,
- yes? If you will wait here, I will run to the clubhouse and get you a
- sandwich and a bottle of ginger-ale. Make yourself quite at home, you
- lovable little fellow! Sit down and have a good time!"
- I turned the pages of Professor Rollitt's book feverishly. I could not
- find a passage that had been marked in blue pencil to meet this
- emergency. I selected one at random.
- "Mitchell," I said, "one moment. How much time he gains who does not
- look to see what his neighbour says or does, but only at what he does
- himself, to make it just and holy."
- "Well, look what I've done myself! I'm somewhere down at the bottom of
- that dashed ravine, and it'll take me a dozen strokes to get out. Do
- you call that just and holy? Here, give me that book for a moment!"
- He snatched the little volume out of my hands. For an instant he looked
- at it with a curious expression of loathing, then he placed it gently
- on the ground and jumped on it a few times. Then he hit it with his
- driver. Finally, as if feeling that the time for half measures had
- passed, he took a little run and kicked it strongly into the long
- grass.
- He turned to Alexander, who had been an impassive spectator of the
- scene.
- "I'm through!" he said. "I concede the match. Good-bye. You'll find me
- in the bay!"
- "Going swimming?"
- "No. Drowning myself."
- A gentle smile broke out over my old friend's usually grave face. He
- patted Mitchell's shoulder affectionately.
- "Don't do that, my boy," he said. "I was hoping you would stick around
- the office awhile as treasurer of the company."
- Mitchell tottered. He grasped my arm for support. Everything was very
- still. Nothing broke the stillness but the humming of the bees, the
- murmur of the distant wavelets, and the sound of Mitchell's caddie
- going on with his apple.
- "What!" cried Mitchell.
- "The position," said Alexander, "will be falling vacant very shortly,
- as no doubt you know. It is yours, if you care to accept it."
- "You mean--you mean--you're going to give me the job?"
- "You have interpreted me exactly."
- Mitchell gulped. So did his caddie. One from a spiritual, the other
- from a physical cause.
- "If you don't mind excusing me," said Mitchell, huskily, "I think I'll
- be popping back to the club-house. Someone I want to see."
- He disappeared through the trees, running strongly. I turned to
- Alexander.
- "What does this mean?" I asked. "I am delighted, but what becomes of
- the test?"
- My old friend smiled gently.
- "The test," he replied, "has been eminently satisfactory.
- Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea
- of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since
- we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have
- come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing and Refining
- Company really needs is a treasurer whom I can beat at golf. And I have
- discovered the ideal man. Why," he went on, a look of holy enthusiasm
- on his fine old face, "do you realize that I can always lick the
- stuffing out of that boy, good player as he is, simply by taking a
- little trouble? I can make him get the wind up every time, simply by
- taking one or two extra practice-swings! That is the sort of man I need
- for a responsible post in my office."
- "But what about Rupert Dixon?" I asked.
- He gave a gesture of distaste.
- "I wouldn't trust that man. Why, when I played with him, everything
- went wrong, and he just smiled and didn't say a word. A man who can do
- that is not the man to trust with the control of large sums of money.
- It wouldn't be safe. Why, the fellow isn't honest! He can't be." He
- paused for a moment. "Besides," he added, thoughtfully, "he beat me by
- six and five. What's the good of a treasurer who beats the boss by six
- and five?"
- 7
- _The Long Hole_
- The young man, as he sat filling his pipe in the club-house
- smoking-room, was inclined to be bitter.
- "If there's one thing that gives me a pain squarely in the centre of
- the gizzard," he burst out, breaking a silence that had lasted for some
- minutes, "it's a golf-lawyer. They oughtn't to be allowed on the
- links."
- The Oldest Member, who had been meditatively putting himself outside a
- cup of tea and a slice of seed-cake, raised his white eyebrows.
- "The Law," he said, "is an honourable profession. Why should its
- practitioners be restrained from indulgence in the game of games?"
- "I don't mean actual lawyers," said the young man, his acerbity
- mellowing a trifle under the influence of tobacco. "I mean the
- blighters whose best club is the book of rules. You know the sort of
- excrescences. Every time you think you've won a hole, they dig out Rule
- eight hundred and fifty-three, section two, sub-section four, to prove
- that you've disqualified yourself by having an ingrowing toe-nail.
- Well, take my case." The young man's voice was high and plaintive. "I
- go out with that man Hemmingway to play an ordinary friendly
- round--nothing depending on it except a measly ball--and on the seventh
- he pulls me up and claims the hole simply because I happened to drop my
- niblick in the bunker. Oh, well, a tick's a tick, and there's nothing
- more to say, I suppose."
- The Sage shook his head.
- "Rules are rules, my boy, and must be kept. It is odd that you should
- have brought up this subject, for only a moment before you came in I
- was thinking of a somewhat curious match which ultimately turned upon a
- question of the rule-book. It is true that, as far as the actual prize
- was concerned, it made little difference. But perhaps I had better tell
- you the whole story from the beginning."
- The young man shifted uneasily in his chair.
- "Well, you know, I've had a pretty rotten time this afternoon
- already----"
- "I will call my story," said the Sage, tranquilly, "'The Long Hole',
- for it involved the playing of what I am inclined to think must be the
- longest hole in the history of golf. In its beginnings the story may
- remind you of one I once told you about Peter Willard and James Todd,
- but you will find that it develops in quite a different manner. Ralph
- Bingham...."
- "I half promised to go and see a man----"
- "But I will begin at the beginning," said the Sage. "I see that you are
- all impatience to hear the full details."
- * * * * *
- Ralph Bingham and Arthur Jukes (said the Oldest Member) had never been
- friends--their rivalry was too keen to admit of that--but it was not
- till Amanda Trivett came to stay here that a smouldering distaste for
- each other burst out into the flames of actual enmity. It is ever so.
- One of the poets, whose name I cannot recall, has a passage, which I am
- unable at the moment to remember, in one of his works, which for the
- time being has slipped my mind, which hits off admirably this age-old
- situation. The gist of his remarks is that lovely woman rarely fails to
- start something. In the weeks that followed her arrival, being in the
- same room with the two men was like dropping in on a reunion of
- Capulets and Montagues.
- You see, Ralph and Arthur were so exactly equal in their skill on the
- links that life for them had for some time past resolved itself into a
- silent, bitter struggle in which first one, then the other, gained some
- slight advantage. If Ralph won the May medal by a stroke, Arthur would
- be one ahead in the June competition, only to be nosed out again in
- July. It was a state of affairs which, had they been men of a more
- generous stamp, would have bred a mutual respect, esteem, and even
- love. But I am sorry to say that, apart from their golf, which was in a
- class of its own as far as this neighbourhood was concerned, Ralph
- Bingham and Arthur Jukes were a sorry pair--and yet, mark you, far from
- lacking in mere superficial good looks. They were handsome fellows,
- both of them, and well aware of the fact; and when Amanda Trivett came
- to stay they simply straightened their ties, twirled their moustaches,
- and expected her to do the rest.
- But there they were disappointed. Perfectly friendly though she was to
- both of them, the lovelight was conspicuously absent from her beautiful
- eyes. And it was not long before each had come independently to a
- solution of this mystery. It was plain to them that the whole trouble
- lay in the fact that each neutralized the other's attractions. Arthur
- felt that, if he could only have a clear field, all would be over
- except the sending out of the wedding invitations; and Ralph was of the
- opinion that, if he could just call on the girl one evening without
- finding the place all littered up with Arthur, his natural charms would
- swiftly bring home the bacon. And, indeed, it was true that they had no
- rivals except themselves. It happened at the moment that Woodhaven was
- very short of eligible bachelors. We marry young in this delightful
- spot, and all the likely men were already paired off. It seemed that,
- if Amanda Trivett intended to get married, she would have to select
- either Ralph Bingham or Arthur Jukes. A dreadful choice.
- * * * * *
- It had not occurred to me at the outset that my position in the affair
- would be anything closer than that of a detached and mildly interested
- spectator. Yet it was to me that Ralph came in his hour of need. When I
- returned home one evening, I found that my man had brought him in and
- laid him on the mat in my sitting-room.
- I offered him a chair and a cigar, and he came to the point with
- commendable rapidity.
- "Leigh," he said, directly he had lighted his cigar, "is too small for
- Arthur Jukes and myself."
- "Ah, you have been talking it over and decided to move?" I said,
- delighted. "I think you are perfectly right. Leigh _is_ over-built.
- Men like you and Jukes need a lot of space. Where do you think of
- going?"
- "I'm not going."
- "But I thought you said----"
- "What I meant was that the time has come when one of us must leave."
- "Oh, only one of you?" It was something, of course, but I confess I was
- disappointed, and I think my disappointment must have shown in my
- voice; for he looked at me, surprised.
- "Surely you wouldn't mind Jukes going?" he said.
- "Why, certainly not. He really is going, is he?"
- A look of saturnine determination came into Ralph's face.
- "He is. He thinks he isn't, but he is."
- I failed to understand him, and said so. He looked cautiously about the
- room, as if to reassure himself that he could not be overheard.
- "I suppose you've noticed," he said, "the disgusting way that man Jukes
- has been hanging round Miss Trivett, boring her to death?"
- "I have seen them together sometimes."
- "I love Amanda Trivett!" said Ralph.
- "Poor girl!" I sighed.
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "Poor girl!" I said. "I mean, to have Arthur Jukes hanging round her."
- "That's just what I think," said Ralph Bingham. "And that's why we're
- going to play this match."
- "What match?"
- "This match we've decided to play. I want you to act as one of the
- judges, to go along with Jukes and see that he doesn't play any of his
- tricks. You know what he is! And in a vital match like this----"
- "How much are you playing for?"
- "The whole world!"
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "The whole world. It amounts to that. The loser is to leave Leigh for
- good, and the winner stays on and marries Amanda Trivett. We have
- arranged all the details. Rupert Bailey will accompany me, acting as
- the other judge."
- "And you want me to go round with Jukes?"
- "Not round," said Ralph Bingham. "Along."
- "What is the distinction?"
- "We are not going to play a round. Only one hole."
- "Sudden death, eh?"
- "Not so very sudden. It's a longish hole. We start on the first tee
- here and hole out in the town in the doorway of the Majestic Hotel in
- Royal Square. A distance, I imagine, of about sixteen miles."
- I was revolted. About that time a perfect epidemic of freak matches had
- broken out in the club, and I had strongly opposed them from the start.
- George Willis had begun it by playing a medal round with the pro.,
- George's first nine against the pro.'s complete eighteen. After that
- came the contest between Herbert Widgeon and Montague Brown, the
- latter, a twenty-four handicap man, being entitled to shout "Boo!"
- three times during the round at moments selected by himself. There had
- been many more of these degrading travesties on the sacred game, and I
- had writhed to see them. Playing freak golf-matches is to my mind like
- ragging a great classical melody. But of the whole collection this one,
- considering the sentimental interest and the magnitude of the stakes,
- seemed to me the most terrible. My face, I imagine, betrayed my
- disgust, for Bingham attempted extenuation.
- "It's the only way," he said. "You know how Jukes and I are on the
- links. We are as level as two men can be. This, of course is due to his
- extraordinary luck. Everybody knows that he is the world's champion
- fluker. I, on the other hand, invariably have the worst luck. The
- consequence is that in an ordinary round it is always a toss-up which
- of us wins. The test we propose will eliminate luck. After sixteen
- miles of give-and-take play, I am certain--that is to say, the better
- man is certain to be ahead. That is what I meant when I said that
- Arthur Jukes would shortly be leaving Leigh. Well, may I take it that
- you will consent to act as one of the judges?"
- I considered. After all, the match was likely to be historic, and one
- always feels tempted to hand one's name down to posterity.
- "Very well," I said.
- "Excellent. You will have to keep a sharp eye on Jukes, I need scarcely
- remind you. You will, of course, carry a book of the rules in your
- pocket and refer to them when you wish to refresh your memory. We start
- at daybreak, for, if we put it off till later, the course at the other
- end might be somewhat congested when we reached it. We want to avoid
- publicity as far as possible. If I took a full iron and hit a
- policeman, it would excite a remark."
- "It would. I can tell you the exact remark which it would excite."
- "We will take bicycles with us, to minimize the fatigue of covering the
- distance. Well, I am glad that we have your co-operation. At daybreak
- tomorrow on the first tee, and don't forget to bring your rule-book."
- * * * * *
- The atmosphere brooding over the first tee when I reached it on the
- following morning, somewhat resembled that of a duelling-ground in the
- days when these affairs were sealed with rapiers or pistols. Rupert
- Bailey, an old friend of mine, was the only cheerful member of the
- party. I am never at my best in the early morning, and the two rivals
- glared at each other with silent sneers. I had never supposed till that
- moment that men ever really sneered at one another outside the movies,
- but these two were indisputably doing so. They were in the mood when
- men say "Pshaw!"
- They tossed for the honour, and Arthur Jukes, having won, drove off
- with a fine ball that landed well down the course. Ralph Bingham,
- having teed up, turned to Rupert Bailey.
- "Go down on to the fairway of the seventeenth," he said. "I want you to
- mark my ball."
- Rupert stared.
- "The seventeenth!"
- "I am going to take that direction," said Ralph, pointing over the
- trees.
- "But that will land your second or third shot in the lake."
- "I have provided for that. I have a fiat-bottomed boat moored close by
- the sixteenth green. I shall use a mashie-niblick and chip my ball
- aboard, row across to the other side, chip it ashore, and carry on. I
- propose to go across country as far as Woodfield. I think it will save
- me a stroke or two."
- I gasped. I had never before realized the man's devilish cunning. His
- tactics gave him a flying start. Arthur, who had driven straight down
- the course, had as his objective the high road, which adjoins the waste
- ground beyond the first green. Once there, he would play the orthodox
- game by driving his ball along till he reached the bridge. While Arthur
- was winding along the high road, Ralph would have cut off practically
- two sides of a triangle. And it was hopeless for Arthur to imitate his
- enemy's tactics now. From where his ball lay he would have to cross a
- wide tract of marsh in order to reach the seventeenth fairway--an
- impossible feat. And, even if it had been feasible, he had no boat to
- take him across the water.
- He uttered a violent protest. He was an unpleasant young man,
- almost--it seems absurd to say so, but almost as unpleasant as Ralph
- Bingham; yet at the moment I am bound to say I sympathized with him.
- "What are you doing?" he demanded. "You can't play fast and loose with
- the rules like that."
- "To what rule do you refer?" said Ralph, coldly.
- "Well, that bally boat of yours is a hazard, isn't it? And you can't
- row a hazard about all over the place."
- "Why not?"
- The simple question seemed to take Arthur Jukes aback.
- "Why not?" he repeated. "Why not? Well, you can't. That's why."
- "There is nothing in the rules," said Ralph Bingham, "against moving a
- hazard. If a hazard can be moved without disturbing the ball, you are
- at liberty, I gather, to move it wherever you please. Besides, what is
- all this about moving hazards? I have a perfect right to go for a
- morning row, haven't I? If I were to ask my doctor, he would probably
- actually recommend it. I am going to row my boat across the sound. If
- it happens to have my ball on board, that is not my affair. I shall not
- disturb my ball, and I shall play it from where it lies. Am I right in
- saying that the rules enact that the ball shall be played from where it
- lies?"
- We admitted that it was.
- "Very well, then," said Ralph Bingham. "Don't let us waste any more
- time. We will wait for you at Woodfield."
- He addressed his ball, and drove a beauty over the trees. It flashed
- out of sight in the direction of the seventeenth tee. Arthur and I made
- our way down the hill to play our second.
- * * * * *
- It is a curious trait of the human mind that, however little personal
- interest one may have in the result, it is impossible to prevent
- oneself taking sides in any event of a competitive nature. I had
- embarked on this affair in a purely neutral spirit, not caring which of
- the two won and only sorry that both could not lose. Yet, as the
- morning wore on, I found myself almost unconsciously becoming
- distinctly pro-Jukes. I did not like the man. I objected to his face,
- his manners, and the colour of his tie. Yet there was something in the
- dogged way in which he struggled against adversity which touched me and
- won my grudging support. Many men, I felt, having been so outmanoeuvred
- at the start, would have given up the contest in despair; but Arthur
- Jukes, for all his defects, had the soul of a true golfer. He declined
- to give up. In grim silence he hacked his ball through the rough till
- he reached the high road; and then, having played twenty-seven, set
- himself resolutely to propel it on its long journey.
- It was a lovely morning, and, as I bicycled along, keeping a fatherly
- eye on Arthur's activities, I realized for the first time in my life
- the full meaning of that exquisite phrase of Coleridge:
- _"Clothing the palpable and familiar
- With golden exhalations of the dawn,"_
- for in the pellucid air everything seemed weirdly beautiful, even
- Arthur Jukes' heather-mixture knickerbockers, of which hitherto I had
- never approved. The sun gleamed on their seat, as he bent to make his
- shots, in a cheerful and almost a poetic way. The birds were singing
- gaily in the hedgerows, and such was my uplifted state that I, too,
- burst into song, until Arthur petulantly desired me to refrain, on the
- plea that, though he yielded to no man in his enjoyment of farmyard
- imitations in their proper place, I put him off his stroke. And so we
- passed through Bayside in silence and started to cover that long
- stretch of road which ends in the railway bridge and the gentle descent
- into Woodfield.
- Arthur was not doing badly. He was at least keeping them straight. And
- in the circumstances straightness was to be preferred to distance. Soon
- after leaving Little Hadley he had become ambitious and had used his
- brassey with disastrous results, slicing his fifty-third into the rough
- on the right of the road. It had taken him ten with the niblick to get
- back on to the car tracks, and this had taught him prudence.
- He was now using his putter for every shot, and, except when he got
- trapped in the cross-lines at the top of the hill just before reaching
- Bayside, he had been in no serious difficulties. He was playing a nice
- easy game, getting the full face of the putter on to each shot.
- At the top of the slope that drops down into Woodfield High Street he
- paused.
- "I think I might try my brassey again here," he said. "I have a nice
- lie."
- "Is it wise?" I said.
- He looked down the hill.
- "What I was thinking," he said, "was that with it I might wing that man
- Bingham. I see he is standing right out in the middle of the fairway."
- I followed his gaze. It was perfectly true. Ralph Bingham was leaning
- on his bicycle in the roadway, smoking a cigarette. Even at this
- distance one could detect the man's disgustingly complacent expression.
- Rupert Bailey was sitting with his back against the door of the
- Woodfield Garage, looking rather used up. He was a man who liked to
- keep himself clean and tidy, and it was plain that the cross-country
- trip had done him no good. He seemed to be scraping mud off his face. I
- learned later that he had had the misfortune to fall into a ditch just
- beyond Bayside.
- "No," said Arthur. "On second thoughts, the safe game is the one to
- play. I'll stick to the putter."
- We dropped down the hill, and presently came up with the opposition. I
- had not been mistaken in thinking that Ralph Bingham looked complacent.
- The man was smirking.
- "Playing three hundred and ninety-six," he said, as we drew near. "How
- are you?"
- I consulted my score-card.
- "We have played a snappy seven hundred and eleven." I said.
- Ralph exulted openly. Rupert Bailey made no comment. He was too busy
- with the alluvial deposits on his person.
- "Perhaps you would like to give up the match?" said Ralph to Arthur.
- "Tchah!" said Arthur.
- "Might just as well."
- "Pah!" said Arthur.
- "You can't win now."
- "Pshaw!" said Arthur.
- I am aware that Arthur's dialogue might have been brighter, but he had
- been through a trying time.
- Rupert Bailey sidled up to me.
- "I'm going home," he said.
- "Nonsense!" I replied. "You are in an official capacity. You must stick
- to your post. Besides, what could be nicer than a pleasant morning
- ramble?"
- "Pleasant morning ramble my number nine foot!" he replied, peevishly.
- "I want to get back to civilization and set an excavating party with
- pickaxes to work on me."
- "You take too gloomy a view of the matter. You are a little dusty.
- Nothing more."
- "And it's not only the being buried alive that I mind. I cannot stick
- Ralph Bingham much longer."
- "You have found him trying?"
- "Trying! Why, after I had fallen into that ditch and was coming up for
- the third time, all the man did was simply to call to me to admire an
- infernal iron shot he had just made. No sympathy, mind you! Wrapped up
- in himself. Why don't you make your man give up the match? He can't
- win."
- "I refuse to admit it. Much may happen between here and Royal Square."
- I have seldom known a prophecy more swiftly fulfilled. At this moment
- the doors of the Woodfield Garage opened and a small car rolled out
- with a grimy young man in a sweater at the wheel. He brought the
- machine out into the road, and alighted and went back into the garage,
- where we heard him shouting unintelligibly to someone in the rear
- premises. The car remained puffing and panting against the kerb.
- Engaged in conversation with Rupert Bailey, I was paying little
- attention to this evidence of an awakening world, when suddenly I heard
- a hoarse, triumphant cry from Arthur Jukes, and, turned, I perceived
- his ball dropping neatly into the car's interior. Arthur himself,
- brandishing a niblick, was dancing about in the fairway.
- "Now what about your moving hazards?" he cried.
- At this moment the man in the sweater returned, carrying a spanner.
- Arthur Jukes sprang towards him.
- "I'll give you five pounds to drive me to Royal Square," he said.
- I do not know what the sweater-clad young man's engagements for the
- morning had been originally, but nothing could have been more obliging
- than the ready way in which he consented to revise them at a moment's
- notice. I dare say you have noticed that the sturdy peasantry of our
- beloved land respond to an offer of five pounds as to a bugle-call.
- "You're on," said the youth.
- "Good!" said Arthur Jukes.
- "You think you're darned clever," said Ralph Bingham.
- "I know it," said Arthur.
- "Well, then," said Ralph, "perhaps you will tell us how you propose to
- get the ball out of the car when you reach Royal Square?"
- "Certainly," replied Arthur. "You will observe on the side of the
- vehicle a convenient handle which, when turned, opens the door. The
- door thus opened, I shall chip my ball out!"
- "I see," said Ralph. "Yes, I never thought of that."
- There was something in the way the man spoke that I did not like. His
- mildness seemed to me suspicious. He had the air of a man who has
- something up his sleeve. I was still musing on this when Arthur called
- to me impatiently to get in. I did so, and we drove off. Arthur was in
- great spirits. He had ascertained from the young man at the wheel that
- there was no chance of the opposition being able to hire another car at
- the garage. This machine was his own property, and the only other one
- at present in the shop was suffering from complicated trouble of the
- oiling-system and would not be able to be moved for at least another
- day.
- I, however, shook my head when he pointed out the advantages of his
- position. I was still wondering about Ralph.
- "I don't like it," I said.
- "Don't like what?"
- "Ralph Bingham's manner."
- "Of course not," said Arthur. "Nobody does. There have been complaints
- on all sides."
- "I mean, when you told him how you intended to get the ball out of the
- car."
- "What was the matter with him?"
- "He was too--ha!"
- "How do you mean he was too--ha?"
- "I have it!"
- "What?"
- "I see the trap he was laying for you. It has just dawned on me. No
- wonder he didn't object to your opening the door and chipping the ball
- out. By doing so you would forfeit the match."
- "Nonsense! Why?"
- "Because," I said, "it is against the rules to tamper with a hazard. If
- you had got into a sand-bunker, would you smooth away the sand? If you
- had put your shot under a tree, could your caddie hold up the branches
- to give you a clear shot? Obviously you would disqualify yourself if
- you touched that door."
- Arthur's jaw dropped.
- "What! Then how the deuce am I to get it out?"
- "That," I said, gravely, "is a question between you and your Maker."
- It was here that Arthur Jukes forfeited the sympathy which I had begun
- to feel for him. A crafty, sinister look came into his eyes.
- "Listen!" he said. "It'll take them an hour to catch up with us.
- Suppose, during that time, that door happened to open accidentally, as
- it were, and close again? You wouldn't think it necessary to mention
- the fact, eh? You would be a good fellow and keep your mouth shut, yes?
- You might even see your way to go so far as to back me up in a
- statement to the effect that I hooked it out with my----?"
- I was revolted.
- "I am a golfer," I said, coldly, "and I obey the rules."
- "Yes, but----"
- "Those rules were drawn up by----"--I bared my head reverently--"by the
- Committee of the Royal and Ancient at St. Andrews. I have always
- respected them, and I shall not deviate on this occasion from the
- policy of a lifetime."
- Arthur Jukes relapsed into a moody silence. He broke it once, crossing
- the West Street Bridge, to observe that he would like to know if I
- called myself a friend of his--a question which I was able to answer
- with a whole-hearted negative. After that he did not speak till the car
- drew up in front of the Majestic Hotel in Royal Square.
- Early as the hour was, a certain bustle and animation already prevailed
- in that centre of the city, and the spectacle of a man in a golf-coat
- and plus-four knickerbockers hacking with a niblick at the floor of a
- car was not long in collecting a crowd of some dimensions. Three
- messenger-boys, four typists, and a gentleman in full evening-dress,
- who obviously possessed or was friendly with someone who possessed a
- large cellar, formed the nucleus of it; and they were joined about the
- time when Arthur addressed the ball in order to play his nine hundred
- and fifteenth by six news-boys, eleven charladies, and perhaps a dozen
- assorted loafers, all speculating with the liveliest interest as to
- which particular asylum had had the honour of sheltering Arthur before
- he had contrived to elude the vigilance of his custodians.
- Arthur had prepared for some such contingency. He suspended his
- activities with the niblick, and drew from his pocket a large poster,
- which he proceeded to hang over the side of the car. It read:
- COME
- TO
- McCLURG AND MACDONALD,
- 18, WEST STREET,
- FOR
- ALL GOLFING SUPPLIES.
- His knowledge of psychology had not misled him. Directly they gathered
- that he was advertising something, the crowd declined to look at it;
- they melted away, and Arthur returned to his work in solitude.
- He was taking a well-earned rest after playing his eleven hundred and
- fifth, a nice niblick shot with lots of wrist behind it, when out of
- Bridle Street there trickled a weary-looking golf-ball, followed in the
- order named by Ralph Bingham, resolute but going a trifle at the knees,
- and Rupert Bailey on a bicycle. The latter, on whose face and limbs the
- mud had dried, made an arresting spectacle.
- "What are you playing?" I inquired.
- "Eleven hundred," said Rupert. "We got into a casual dog."
- "A casual dog?"
- "Yes, just before the bridge. We were coming along nicely, when a stray
- dog grabbed our nine hundred and ninety-eighth and took it nearly back
- to Woodfield, and we had to start all over again. How are you getting
- on?"
- "We have just played our eleven hundred and fifth. A nice even game." I
- looked at Ralph's ball, which was lying close to the kerb. "You are
- farther from the hole, I think. Your shot, Bingham."
- Rupert Bailey suggested breakfast. He was a man who was altogether too
- fond of creature comforts. He had not the true golfing spirit.
- "Breakfast!" I exclaimed.
- "Breakfast," said Rupert, firmly. "If you don't know what it is, I can
- teach you in half a minute. You play it with a pot of coffee, a knife
- and fork, and about a hundred-weight of scrambled eggs. Try it. It's a
- pastime that grows on you."
- I was surprised when Ralph Bingham supported the suggestion. He was so
- near holing out that I should have supposed that nothing would have
- kept him from finishing the match. But he agreed heartily.
- "Breakfast," he said, "is an excellent idea. You go along in. I'll
- follow in a moment. I want to buy a paper."
- We went into the hotel, and a few minutes later he joined us. Now that
- we were actually at the table, I confess that the idea of breakfast was
- by no means repugnant to me. The keen air and the exercise had given me
- an appetite, and it was some little time before I was able to assure
- the waiter definitely that he could cease bringing orders of scrambled
- eggs. The others having finished also, I suggested a move. I was
- anxious to get the match over and be free to go home.
- We filed out of the hotel, Arthur Jukes leading. When I had passed
- through the swing-doors, I found him gazing perplexedly up and down the
- street.
- "What is the matter?" I asked.
- "It's gone!"
- "What has gone?"
- "The car!"
- "Oh, the car?" said Ralph Bingham. "That's all right. Didn't I tell you
- about that? I bought it just now and engaged the driver as my
- chauffeur, I've been meaning to buy a car for a long time. A man ought
- to have a car."
- "Where is it?" said Arthur, blankly. The man seemed dazed.
- "I couldn't tell you to a mile or two," replied Ralph. "I told the man
- to drive to Glasgow. Why? Had you any message for him?"
- "But my ball was inside it!"
- "Now that," said Ralph, "is really unfortunate! Do you mean to tell me
- you hadn't managed to get it out yet? Yes, that is a little awkward for
- you. I'm afraid it means that you lose the match."
- "Lose the match?"
- "Certainly. The rules are perfectly definite on that point. A period of
- five minutes is allowed for each stroke. The player who fails to make
- his stroke within that time loses the hole. Unfortunate, but there it
- is!"
- Arthur Jukes sank down on the path and buried his face in his hands. He
- had the appearance of a broken man. Once more, I am bound to say, I
- felt a certain pity for him. He had certainly struggled gamely, and it
- was hard to be beaten like this on the post.
- "Playing eleven hundred and one," said Ralph Bingham, in his odiously
- self-satisfied voice, as he addressed his ball. He laughed jovially. A
- messenger-boy had paused close by and was watching the proceedings
- gravely. Ralph Bingham patted him on the head.
- "Well, sonny," he said, "what club would _you_ use here?"
- "I claim the match!" cried Arthur Jukes, springing up. Ralph Bingham
- regarded him coldly.
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "I claim the match!" repeated Arthur Jukes. "The rules say that a
- player who asks advice from any person other than his caddie shall lose
- the hole."
- "This is absurd!" said Ralph, but I noticed that he had turned pale.
- "I appeal to the judges."
- "We sustain the appeal," I said, after a brief consultation with Rupert
- Bailey. "The rule is perfectly clear."
- "But you had lost the match already by not playing within five
- minutes," said Ralph, vehemently.
- "It was not my turn to play. You were farther from the pin."
- "Well, play now. Go on! Let's see you make your shot."
- "There is no necessity," said Arthur, frigidly. "Why should I play when
- you have already disqualified yourself?"
- "I claim a draw!"
- "I deny the claim."
- "I appeal to the judges."
- "Very well. We will leave it to the judges."
- I consulted with Rupert Bailey. It seemed to me that Arthur Jukes was
- entitled to the verdict. Rupert, who, though an amiable and delightful
- companion, had always been one of Nature's fat-heads, could not see it.
- We had to go back to our principals and announce that we had been
- unable to agree.
- "This is ridiculous," said Ralph Bingham. "We ought to have had a third
- judge."
- At this moment, who should come out of the hotel but Amanda Trivett! A
- veritable goddess from the machine.
- "It seems to me," I said, "that you would both be well advised to leave
- the decision to Miss Trivett. You could have no better referee."
- "I'm game," said Arthur Jukes.
- "Suits _me_," said Ralph Bingham.
- "Why, whatever are you all doing here with your golf-clubs?" asked the
- girl, wonderingly.
- "These two gentlemen," I explained, "have been playing a match, and a
- point has arisen on which the judges do not find themselves in
- agreement. We need an unbiased outside opinion, and we should like to
- put it up to you. The facts are as follows:..."
- Amanda Trivett listened attentively, but, when I had finished, she
- shook her head.
- "I'm afraid I don't know enough about the game to be able to decide a
- question like that," she said.
- "Then we must consult St. Andrews," said Rupert Bailey.
- "I'll tell you who might know," said Amanda Trivett, after a moment's
- thought.
- "Who is that?" I asked.
- "My _fiance_. He has just come back from a golfing holiday. That's
- why I'm in town this morning. I've been to meet him. He is very good at
- golf. He won a medal at Little-Mudbury-in-the-Wold the day before he
- left."
- There was a tense silence. I had the delicacy not to look at Ralph or
- Arthur. Then the silence was broken by a sharp crack. Ralph Bingham had
- broken his mashie-niblick across his knee. From the direction where
- Arthur Jukes was standing there came a muffled gulp.
- "Shall I ask him?" said Amanda Trivett.
- "Don't bother," said Ralph Bingham.
- "It doesn't matter," said Arthur Jukes.
- 8
- _The Heel of Achilles_
- On the young man's face, as he sat sipping his ginger-ale in the
- club-house smoking-room, there was a look of disillusionment. "Never
- again!" he said.
- The Oldest Member glanced up from his paper.
- "You are proposing to give up golf once more?" he queried.
- "Not golf. Betting on golf." The Young Man frowned. "I've just been let
- down badly. Wouldn't you have thought I had a good thing, laying seven
- to one on McTavish against Robinson?"
- "Undoubtedly," said the Sage. "The odds, indeed, generous as they are,
- scarcely indicate the former's superiority. Do you mean to tell me that
- the thing came unstitched?"
- "Robinson won in a walk, after being three down at the turn.
- "Strange! What happened?"
- "Why, they looked in at the bar to have a refresher before starting for
- the tenth," said the young man, his voice quivering, "and McTavish
- suddenly discovered that there was a hole in his trouser-pocket and
- sixpence had dropped out. He worried so frightfully about it that on
- the second nine he couldn't do a thing right. Went completely off his
- game and didn't win a hole."
- The Sage shook his head gravely.
- "If this is really going to be a lesson to you, my boy, never to bet on
- the result of a golf-match, it will be a blessing in disguise. There is
- no such thing as a certainty in golf. I wonder if I ever told you a
- rather curious episode in the career of Vincent Jopp?"
- "_The_ Vincent Jopp? The American multi-millionaire?"
- "The same. You never knew he once came within an ace of winning the
- American Amateur Championship, did you?"
- "I never heard of his playing golf."
- "He played for one season. After that he gave it up and has not touched
- a club since. Ring the bell and get me a small lime-juice, and I will
- tell you all."
- * * * * *
- It was long before your time (said the Oldest Member) that the events
- which I am about to relate took place. I had just come down from
- Cambridge, and was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I
- had secured the job of private and confidential secretary to Vincent
- Jopp, then a man in the early thirties, busy in laying the foundations
- of his present remarkable fortune. He engaged me, and took me with him
- to Chicago.
- Jopp was, I think, the most extraordinary personality I have
- encountered in a long and many-sided life. He was admirably equipped
- for success in finance, having the steely eye and square jaw without
- which it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business. He
- possessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself, and the ability
- to switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without
- wiggling his ears, which, as you know, is the stamp of the true Monarch
- of the Money Market. He was the nearest approach to the financier on
- the films, the fellow who makes his jaw-muscles jump when he is
- telephoning, that I have ever seen.
- Like all successful men, he was a man of method. He kept a pad on his
- desk on which he would scribble down his appointments, and it was my
- duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its
- contents neatly in a loose-leaved ledger. Usually, of course, these
- entries referred to business appointments and deals which he was
- contemplating, but one day I was interested to note, against the date
- May 3rd, the entry:
- "_Propose to Amelia_"
- I was interested, as I say, but not surprised. Though a man of steel
- and iron, there was nothing of the celibate about Vincent Jopp. He was
- one of those men who marry early and often. On three separate occasions
- before I joined his service he had jumped off the dock, to scramble
- back to shore again later by means of the Divorce Court lifebelt.
- Scattered here and there about the country there were three ex-Mrs.
- Jopps, drawing their monthly envelope, and now, it seemed, he
- contemplated the addition of a fourth to the platoon.
- I was not surprised, I say, at this resolve of his. What did seem a
- little remarkable to me was the thorough way in which he had thought
- the thing out. This iron-willed man recked nothing of possible
- obstacles. Under the date of June 1st was the entry:
- "_Marry Amelia_";
- while in March of the following year he had arranged to have his
- first-born christened Thomas Reginald. Later on, the short-coating of
- Thomas Reginald was arranged for, and there was a note about sending
- him to school. Many hard things have been said of Vincent Jopp, but
- nobody has ever accused him of not being a man who looked ahead.
- On the morning of May 4th Jopp came into the office, looking, I
- fancied, a little thoughtful. He sat for some moments staring before
- him with his brow a trifle furrowed; then he seemed to come to himself.
- He rapped his desk.
- "Hi! You!" he said. It was thus that he habitually addressed me.
- "Mr. Jopp?" I replied.
- "What's golf?"
- I had at that time just succeeded in getting my handicap down into
- single figures, and I welcomed the opportunity of dilating on the
- noblest of pastimes. But I had barely begun my eulogy when he stopped
- me.
- "It's a game, is it?"
- "I suppose you could call it that," I said, "but it is an offhand way
- of describing the holiest----"
- "How do you play it?"
- "Pretty well," I said. "At the beginning of the season I didn't seem
- able to keep 'em straight at all, but lately I've been doing fine.
- Getting better every day. Whether it was that I was moving my head or
- gripping too tightly with the right hand----"
- "Keep the reminiscences for your grandchildren during the long winter
- evenings," he interrupted, abruptly, as was his habit. "What I want to
- know is what a fellow does when he plays golf. Tell me in as few words
- as you can just what it's all about."
- "You hit a ball with a stick till it falls into a hole."
- "Easy!" he snapped. "Take dictation."
- I produced my pad.
- "May the fifth, take up golf. What's an Amateur Championship?"
- "It is the annual competition to decide which is the best player among
- the amateurs. There is also a Professional Championship, and an Open
- event."
- "Oh, there are golf professionals, are there? What do they do?"
- "They teach golf."
- "Which is the best of them?"
- "Sandy McHoots won both British and American Open events last year."
- "Wire him to come here at once."
- "But McHoots is in Inverlochty, in Scotland."
- "Never mind. Get him; tell him to name his own terms. When is the
- Amateur Championship?"
- "I think it is on September the twelfth this year."
- "All right, take dictation. September twelfth win Amateur
- Championship."
- I stared at him in amazement, but he was not looking at me.
- "Got that?" he said. "September thir--Oh, I was forgetting! Add
- September twelfth, corner wheat. September thirteenth, marry Amelia."
- "Marry Amelia," I echoed, moistening my pencil.
- "Where do you play this--what's-its-name--golf?"
- "There are clubs all over the country. I belong to the Wissahicky
- Glen."
- "That a good place?"
- "Very good."
- "Arrange today for my becoming a member."
- * * * * *
- Sandy McHoots arrived in due course, and was shown into the private
- office.
- "Mr. McHoots?" said Vincent Jopp.
- "Mphm!" said the Open Champion.
- "I have sent for you, Mr. McHoots, because I hear that you are the
- greatest living exponent of this game of golf."
- "Aye," said the champion, cordially. "I am that."
- "I wish you to teach me the game. I am already somewhat behind schedule
- owing to the delay incident upon your long journey, so let us start at
- once. Name a few of the most important points in connection with the
- game. My secretary will make notes of them, and I will memorize them.
- In this way we shall save time. Now, what is the most important thing
- to remember when playing golf?"
- "Keep your heid still."
- "A simple task."
- "Na sae simple as it soonds."
- "Nonsense!" said Vincent Jopp, curtly. "If I decide to keep my head
- still, I shall keep it still. What next?"
- "Keep yer ee on the ba'."
- "It shall be attended to. And the next?"
- "Dinna press."
- "I won't. And to resume."
- Mr. McHoots ran through a dozen of the basic rules, and I took them
- down in shorthand. Vincent Jopp studied the list.
- "Very good. Easier than I had supposed. On the first tee at Wissahicky
- Glen at eleven sharp tomorrow, Mr. McHoots. Hi! You!"
- "Sir?" I said.
- "Go out and buy me a set of clubs, a red jacket, a cloth cap, a pair of
- spiked shoes, and a ball."
- "One ball?"
- "Certainly. What need is there of more?"
- "It sometimes happens," I explained, "that a player who is learning the
- game fails to hit his ball straight, and then he often loses it in the
- rough at the side of the fairway."
- "Absurd!" said Vincent Jopp. "If I set out to drive my ball straight, I
- shall drive it straight. Good morning, Mr. McHoots. You will excuse me
- now. I am busy cornering Woven Textiles."
- * * * * *
- Golf is in its essence a simple game. You laugh in a sharp, bitter,
- barking manner when I say this, but nevertheless it is true. Where the
- average man goes wrong is in making the game difficult for himself.
- Observe the non-player, the man who walks round with you for the sake
- of the fresh air. He will hole out with a single care-free flick of his
- umbrella the twenty-foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitate
- for a full minute before sending it right off the line. Put a driver in
- his hands and he pastes the ball into the next county without a
- thought. It is only when he takes to the game in earnest that he
- becomes self-conscious and anxious, and tops his shots even as you and
- I. A man who could retain through his golfing career the almost
- scornful confidence of the non-player would be unbeatable. Fortunately
- such an attitude of mind is beyond the scope of human nature.
- It was not, however, beyond the scope of Vincent Jopp, the superman.
- Vincent Jopp, was, I am inclined to think, the only golfer who ever
- approached the game in a spirit of Pure Reason. I have read of men who,
- never having swum in their lives, studied a text-book on their way down
- to the swimming bath, mastered its contents, and dived in and won the
- big race. In just such a spirit did Vincent Jopp start to play golf. He
- committed McHoots's hints to memory, and then went out on the links and
- put them into practice. He came to the tee with a clear picture in his
- mind of what he had to do, and he did it. He was not intimidated, like
- the average novice, by the thought that if he pulled in his hands he
- would slice, or if he gripped too tightly with the right he would pull.
- Pulling in the hands was an error, so he did not pull in his hands.
- Gripping too tightly was a defect, so he did not grip too tightly. With
- that weird concentration which had served him so well in business he
- did precisely what he had set out to do--no less and no more. Golf with
- Vincent Jopp was an exact science.
- The annals of the game are studded with the names of those who have
- made rapid progress in their first season. Colonel Quill, we read in
- our Vardon, took up golf at the age of fifty-six, and by devising an
- ingenious machine consisting of a fishing-line and a sawn-down bedpost
- was enabled to keep his head so still that he became a scratch player
- before the end of the year. But no one, I imagine, except Vincent Jopp,
- has ever achieved scratch on his first morning on the links.
- The main difference, we are told, between the amateur and the
- professional golfer is the fact that the latter is always aiming at the
- pin, while the former has in his mind a vague picture of getting
- somewhere reasonably near it. Vincent Jopp invariably went for the pin.
- He tried to hole out from anywhere inside two hundred and twenty yards.
- The only occasion on which I ever heard him express any chagrin or
- disappointment was during the afternoon round on his first day out,
- when from the tee on the two hundred and eighty yard seventh he laid
- his ball within six inches of the hole.
- "A marvellous shot!" I cried, genuinely stirred.
- "Too much to the right," said Vincent Jopp, frowning.
- He went on from triumph to triumph. He won the monthly medal in May,
- June, July, August, and September. Towards the end of May he was heard
- to complain that Wissahicky Glen was not a sporting course. The Greens
- Committee sat up night after night trying to adjust his handicap so as
- to give other members an outside chance against him. The golf experts
- of the daily papers wrote columns about his play. And it was pretty
- generally considered throughout the country that it would be a pure
- formality for anyone else to enter against him in the Amateur
- Championship--an opinion which was borne out when he got through into
- the final without losing a hole. A safe man to have betted on, you
- would have said. But mark the sequel.
- * * * * *
- The American Amateur Championship was held that year in Detroit. I had
- accompanied my employer there; for, though engaged on this
- nerve-wearing contest, he refused to allow his business to be
- interfered with. As he had indicated in his schedule, he was busy at
- the time cornering wheat; and it was my task to combine the duties of
- caddy and secretary. Each day I accompanied him round the links with my
- note-book and his bag of clubs, and the progress of his various matches
- was somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph-boys
- bearing important messages. He would read these between the strokes and
- dictate replies to me, never, however, taking more than the five
- minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes. I am
- inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his
- opponents' discomfiture. It is not soothing for a nervous man to have
- the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy
- a letter beginning "Yours of the 11th inst. received and contents
- noted. In reply would state----" This sort of thing puts a man off his
- game.
- I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work,
- when I found that I was being paged. I answered the summons, and was
- informed that a lady wished to see me. Her card bore the name "Miss
- Amelia Merridew." Amelia! The name seemed familiar. Then I remembered.
- Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jopp intended to marry, the
- fourth of the long line of Mrs. Jopps. I hurried to present myself, and
- found a tall, slim girl, who was plainly labouring under a considerable
- agitation.
- "Miss Merridew?" I said.
- "Yes," she murmured. "My name will be strange to you."
- "Am I right," I queried, "in supposing that you are the lady to whom
- Mr. Jopp----"
- "I am! I am!" she replied. "And, oh, what shall I do?"
- "Kindly give me particulars," I said, taking out my pad from force of
- habit.
- She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to speak.
- "You are caddying for Mr. Jopp in the Final tomorrow?" she said at
- last.
- "I am."
- "Then could you--would you mind--would it be giving you too much
- trouble if I asked you to shout 'Boo!' at him when he is making his
- stroke, if he looks like winning?"
- I was perplexed.
- "I don't understand."
- "I see that I must tell you all. I am sure you will treat what I say as
- absolutely confidential."
- "Certainly."
- "I am provisionally engaged to Mr. Jopp."
- "Provisionally?"
- She gulped.
- "Let me tell you my story. Mr. Jopp asked me to marry him, and I would
- rather do anything on earth than marry him. But how could I say 'No!'
- with those awful eyes of his boring me through? I knew that if I said
- 'No', he would argue me out of it in two minutes. I had an idea. I
- gathered that he had never played golf, so I told him that I would
- marry him if he won the Amateur Championship this year. And now I find
- that he has been a golfer all along, and, what is more, a plus man! It
- isn't fair!"
- "He was not a golfer when you made that condition," I said. "He took up
- the game on the following day."
- "Impossible! How could he have become as good as he is in this short
- time?"
- "Because he is Vincent Jopp! In his lexicon there is no such word as
- impossible."
- She shuddered.
- "What a man! But I can't marry him," she cried. "I want to marry
- somebody else. Oh, won't you help me? Do shout 'Boo!' at him when he is
- starting his down-swing!"
- I shook my head.
- "It would take more than a single 'boo' to put Vincent Jopp off his
- stroke."
- "But won't you try it?"
- "I cannot. My duty is to my employer."
- "Oh, do!"
- "No, no. Duty is duty, and paramount with me. Besides, I have a bet on
- him to win."
- The stricken girl uttered a faint moan, and tottered away.
- * * * * *
- I was in our suite shortly after dinner that night, going over some of
- the notes I had made that day, when the telephone rang. Jopp was out at
- the time, taking a short stroll with his after-dinner cigar. I unhooked
- the receiver, and a female voice spoke.
- "Is that Mr. Jopp?"
- "Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking. Mr. Jopp is out."
- "Oh, it's nothing important. Will you say that Mrs. Luella Mainprice
- Jopp called up to wish him luck? I shall be on the course tomorrow to
- see him win the final."
- I returned to my notes. Soon afterwards the telephone rang again.
- "Vincent, dear?"
- "Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
- "Oh, will you say that Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp called up to wish him luck?
- I shall be there tomorrow to see him play."
- I resumed my work. I had hardly started when the telephone rang for the
- third time.
- "Mr. Jopp?"
- "Mr. Jopp's secretary speaking."
- "This is Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp. I just called up to wish him luck. I
- shall be looking on tomorrow."
- I shifted my work nearer to the telephone-table so as to be ready for
- the next call. I had heard that Vincent Jopp had only been married
- three times, but you never knew.
- Presently Jopp came in.
- "Anybody called up?" he asked.
- "Nobody on business. An assortment of your wives were on the wire
- wishing you luck. They asked me to say that they will be on the course
- tomorrow."
- For a moment it seemed to me that the man's iron repose was shaken.
- "Luella?" he asked.
- "She was the first."
- "Jane?"
- "And Jane."
- "And Agnes?"
- "Agnes," I said, "is right."
- "H'm!" said Vincent Jopp. And for the first time since I had known him
- I thought that he was ill at ease.
- * * * * *
- The day of the final dawned bright and clear. At least, I was not awake
- at the time to see, but I suppose it did; for at nine o'clock, when I
- came down to breakfast, the sun was shining brightly. The first
- eighteen holes were to be played before lunch, starting at eleven.
- Until twenty minutes before the hour Vincent Jopp kept me busy taking
- dictation, partly on matters connected with his wheat deal and partly
- on a signed article dealing with the Final, entitled "How I Won." At
- eleven sharp we were out on the first tee.
- Jopp's opponent was a nice-looking young man, but obviously nervous. He
- giggled in a distraught sort of way as he shook hands with my employer.
- "Well, may the best man win," he said.
- "I have arranged to do so," replied Jopp, curtly, and started to
- address his ball.
- There was a large crowd at the tee, and, as Jopp started his
- down-swing, from somewhere on the outskirts of this crowd there came
- suddenly a musical "Boo!" It rang out in the clear morning air like a
- bugle.
- I had been right in my estimate of Vincent Jopp. His forceful stroke
- never wavered. The head of his club struck the ball, despatching it a
- good two hundred yards down the middle of the fairway. As we left the
- tee I saw Amelia Merridew being led away with bowed head by two members
- of the Greens Committee. Poor girl! My heart bled for her. And yet,
- after all, Fate had been kind in removing her from the scene, even in
- custody, for she could hardly have borne to watch the proceedings.
- Vincent Jopp made rings round his antagonist. Hole after hole he won in
- his remorseless, machine-like way, until when lunch-time came at the
- end of the eighteenth he was ten up. All the other holes had been
- halved.
- It was after lunch, as we made our way to the first tee, that the
- advance-guard of the Mrs. Jopps appeared in the person of Luella
- Mainprice Jopp, a kittenish little woman with blond hair and a
- Pekingese dog. I remembered reading in the papers that she had divorced
- my employer for persistent and aggravated mental cruelty, calling
- witnesses to bear out her statement that he had said he did not like
- her in pink, and that on two separate occasions had insisted on her dog
- eating the leg of a chicken instead of the breast; but Time, the great
- healer, seemed to have removed all bitterness, and she greeted him
- affectionately.
- "Wassums going to win great big championship against nasty rough strong
- man?" she said.
- "Such," said Vincent Jopp, "is my intention. It was kind of you,
- Luella, to trouble to come and watch me. I wonder if you know Mrs.
- Agnes Parsons Jopp?" he said, courteously, indicating a kind-looking,
- motherly woman who had just come up. "How are you, Agnes?"
- "If you had asked me that question this morning, Vincent," replied Mrs.
- Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I should have been obliged to say that I felt far
- from well. I had an odd throbbing feeling in the left elbow, and I am
- sure my temperature was above the normal. But this afternoon I am a
- little better. How are you, Vincent?"
- Although she had, as I recalled from the reports of the case, been
- compelled some years earlier to request the Court to sever her marital
- relations with Vincent Jopp on the ground of calculated and inhuman
- brutality, in that he had callously refused, in spite of her pleadings,
- to take old Dr. Bennett's Tonic Swamp-Juice three times a day, her
- voice, as she spoke, was kind and even anxious. Badly as this man had
- treated her--and I remember hearing that several of the jury had been
- unable to restrain their tears when she was in the witness-box giving
- her evidence--there still seemed to linger some remnants of the old
- affection.
- "I am quite well, thank you, Agnes," said Vincent Jopp.
- "Are you wearing your liver-pad?"
- A frown flitted across my employer's strong face.
- "I am not wearing my liver-pad," he replied, brusquely.
- "Oh, Vincent, how rash of you!"
- He was about to speak, when a sudden exclamation from his rear checked
- him. A genial-looking woman in a sports coat was standing there, eyeing
- him with a sort of humorous horror.
- "Well, Jane," he said.
- I gathered that this was Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, the wife who had
- divorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the ground
- that he had repeatedly outraged her feelings by wearing a white
- waistcoat with a dinner-jacket. She continued to look at him dumbly,
- and then uttered a sort of strangled, hysterical laugh.
- "Those legs!" she cried. "Those legs!"
- Vincent Jopp flushed darkly. Even the strongest and most silent of us
- have our weaknesses, and my employer's was the rooted idea that he
- looked well in knickerbockers. It was not my place to try to dissuade
- him, but there was no doubt that they did not suit him. Nature, in
- bestowing upon him a massive head and a jutting chin, had forgotten to
- finish him off at the other end. Vincent Jopp's legs were skinny.
- "You poor dear man!" went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. "What practical
- joker ever lured you into appearing in public in knickerbockers?"
- "I don't object to the knickerbockers," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,
- "but when he foolishly comes out in quite a strong east wind without
- his liver-pad----"
- "Little Tinky-Ting don't need no liver-pad, he don't," said Mrs. Luella
- Mainprice Jopp, addressing the animal in her arms, "because he was his
- muzzer's pet, he was."
- I was standing quite near to Vincent Jopp, and at this moment I saw a
- bead of perspiration spring out on his forehead, and into his steely
- eyes there came a positively hunted look. I could understand and
- sympathize. Napoleon himself would have wilted if he had found himself
- in the midst of a trio of females, one talking baby-talk, another
- fussing about his health, and the third making derogatory observations
- on his lower limbs. Vincent Jopp was becoming unstrung.
- "May as well be starting, shall we?"
- It was Jopp's opponent who spoke. There was a strange, set look on his
- face--the look of a man whose back is against the wall. Ten down on the
- morning's round, he had drawn on his reserves of courage and was
- determined to meet the inevitable bravely.
- Vincent Jopp nodded absently, then turned to me.
- "Keep those women away from me," he whispered tensely. "They'll put me
- off my stroke!"
- "Put _you_ off your stroke!" I exclaimed, incredulously.
- "Yes, me! How the deuce can I concentrate, with people babbling about
- liver-pads, and--and knickerbockers all round me? Keep them away!"
- He started to address his ball, and there was a weak uncertainty in the
- way he did it that prepared me for what was to come. His club rose,
- wavered, fell; and the ball, badly topped, trickled two feet and sank
- into a cuppy lie.
- "Is that good or bad?" inquired Mrs. Luella Mainprice Jopp.
- A sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other competitor in
- the final. He swung with renewed vigour. His ball sang through the air,
- and lay within chip-shot distance of the green.
- "At the very least," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I hope, Vincent,
- that you are wearing flannel next your skin."
- I heard Jopp give a stifled groan as he took his spoon from the bag. He
- made a gallant effort to retrieve the lost ground, but the ball struck
- a stone and bounded away into the long grass to the side of the green.
- His opponent won the hole.
- We moved to the second tee.
- "Now, that young man," said Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp, indicating her late
- husband's blushing antagonist, "is quite right to wear knickerbockers.
- He can carry them off. But a glance in the mirror must have shown you
- that you----"
- "I'm sure you're feverish, Vincent," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp,
- solicitously. "You are quite flushed. There is a wild gleam in your
- eyes."
- "Muzzer's pet got little buttons of eyes, that don't never have no wild
- gleam in zem because he's muzzer's own darling, he was!" said Mrs.
- Luella Mainprice Jopp.
- A hollow groan escaped Vincent Jopp's ashen lips.
- I need not recount the play hole by hole, I think. There are some
- subjects that are too painful. It was pitiful to watch Vincent Jopp in
- his downfall. By the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced to
- one, and his antagonist, rendered a new man by success, was playing
- magnificent golf. On the next hole he drew level. Then with a
- superhuman effort Jopp contrived to halve the eleventh, twelfth, and
- thirteenth. It seemed as though his iron will might still assert
- itself, but on the fourteenth the end came.
- He had driven a superb ball, outdistancing his opponent by a full fifty
- yards. The latter played a good second to within a few feet of the
- green. And then, as Vincent Jopp was shaping for his stroke, Luella
- Mainprice gave tongue.
- "Vincent!"
- "Well?"
- "Vincent, that other man--bad man--not playing fair. When your back was
- turned just now, he gave his ball a great bang. _I_ was watching
- him."
- "At any rate," said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jopp, "I do hope, when the game
- is over, Vincent, that you will remember to cool slowly."
- "Flesho!" cried Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp triumphantly. "I've been trying to
- remember the name all the afternoon. I saw about it in one of the
- papers. The advertisements speak most highly of it. You take it before
- breakfast and again before retiring, and they guarantee it to produce
- firm, healthy flesh on the most sparsely-covered limbs in next to no
- time. Now, _will_ you remember to get a bottle tonight? It comes
- in two sizes, the five-shilling (or large size) and the smaller at
- half-a-crown. G. K. Chesterton writes that he used it regularly for
- years."
- Vincent Jopp uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took the
- mashie from his bag, was trembling like an aspen.
- Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the club-house, a beaten
- man.
- * * * * *
- And so (concluded the Oldest Member) you see that in golf there is no
- such thing as a soft snap. You can never be certain of the finest
- player. Anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the
- game. In a recent competition George Duncan took eleven shots over a
- hole which eighteen-handicap men generally do in five. No! Back horses
- or go down to Throgmorton Street and try to take it away from the
- Rothschilds, and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financier.
- But to bet at golf is pure gambling.
- 9
- _The Rough Stuff_
- Into the basking warmth of the day there had crept, with the approach
- of evening, that heartening crispness which heralds the advent of
- autumn. Already, in the valley by the ninth tee, some of the trees had
- begun to try on strange colours, in tentative experiment against the
- coming of nature's annual fancy dress ball, when the soberest tree
- casts off its workaday suit of green and plunges into a riot of reds
- and yellows. On the terrace in front of the club-house an occasional
- withered leaf fluttered down on the table where the Oldest Member sat,
- sipping a thoughtful seltzer and lemon and listening with courteous
- gravity to a young man in a sweater and golf breeches who occupied the
- neighbouring chair.
- "She is a dear girl," said the young man a little moodily, "a dear girl
- in every respect. But somehow--I don't know--when I see her playing
- golf I can't help thinking that woman's place is in the home."
- The Oldest Member inclined his frosted head.
- "You think," he said, "that lovely woman loses in queenly dignity when
- she fails to slam the ball squarely on the meat?"
- "I don't mind her missing the pill," said the young man. "But I think
- her attitude toward the game is too light-hearted."
- "Perhaps it cloaks a deeper feeling. One of the noblest women I ever
- knew used to laugh merrily when she foozled a short putt. It was only
- later, when I learned that in the privacy of her home she would weep
- bitterly and bite holes in the sofa cushions, that I realized that she
- did but wear the mask. Continue to encourage your _fiancee_ to
- play the game, my boy. Much happiness will reward you. I could tell you
- a story----"
- A young woman of singular beauty and rather statuesque appearance came
- out of the club-house carrying a baby swaddled in flannel. As she drew
- near the table she said to the baby:
- "Chicketty wicketty wicketty wipsey pop!"
- In other respects her intelligence appeared to be above the ordinary.
- "Isn't he a darling!" she said, addressing the Oldest Member.
- The Sage cast a meditative eye upon the infant. Except to the eye of
- love, it looked like a skinned poached egg.
- "Unquestionably so," he replied.
- "Don't you think he looks more like his father every day?"
- For a brief instant the Oldest Member seemed to hesitate.
- "Assuredly!" he said. "Is your husband out on the links today?"
- "Not today. He had to see Wilberforce off on the train to Scotland."
- "Your brother is going to Scotland?"
- "Yes. Ramsden has such a high opinion of the schools up there. I did
- say that Scotland was a long way off, and he said yes, that had
- occurred to him, but that we must make sacrifices for Willie's good. He
- was very brave and cheerful about it. Well, I mustn't stay. There's
- quite a nip in the air, and Rammikins will get a nasty cold in his
- precious little button of a nose if I don't walk him about. Say
- 'Bye-bye' to the gentleman, Rammy!"
- The Oldest Member watched her go thoughtfully.
- "There is a nip in the air," he said, "and, unlike our late
- acquaintance in the flannel, I am not in my first youth. Come with me,
- I want to show you something."
- He led the way into the club-house, and paused before the wall of the
- smoking-room. This was decorated from top to bottom with bold
- caricatures of members of the club.
- "These," he said, "are the work of a young newspaper artist who belongs
- here. A clever fellow. He has caught the expressions of these men
- wonderfully. His only failure, indeed, is that picture of myself." He
- regarded it with distaste, and a touch of asperity crept into his
- manner. "I don't know why the committee lets it stay there," he said,
- irritably. "It isn't a bit like." He recovered himself. "But all the
- others are excellent, excellent, though I believe many of the subjects
- are under the erroneous impression that they bear no resemblance to the
- originals. Here is the picture I wished to show you. That is Ramsden
- Waters, the husband of the lady who has just left us."
- The portrait which he indicated was that of a man in the early
- thirties. Pale saffron hair surmounted a receding forehead. Pale blue
- eyes looked out over a mouth which wore a pale, weak smile, from the
- centre of which protruded two teeth of a rabbit-like character.
- "Golly! What a map!" exclaimed the young man at his side.
- "Precisely!" said the Oldest Member. "You now understand my momentary
- hesitation in agreeing with Mrs. Waters that the baby was like its
- father. I was torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, politeness
- demanded that I confirm any statement made by a lady. Common humanity,
- on the other hand, made it repugnant to me to knock an innocent child.
- Yes, that is Ramsden Waters. Sit down and take the weight off your
- feet, and I will tell you about him. The story illustrates a favourite
- theory of mine, that it is an excellent thing that women should be
- encouraged to take up golf. There are, I admit, certain drawbacks
- attendant on their presence on the links. I shall not readily forget
- the occasion on which a low, raking drive of mine at the eleventh
- struck the ladies' tee box squarely and came back and stunned my
- caddie, causing me to lose stroke and distance. Nevertheless, I hold
- that the advantages outnumber the drawbacks. Golf humanizes women,
- humbles their haughty natures, tends, in short, to knock out of their
- systems a certain modicum of that superciliousness, that swank, which
- makes wooing a tough proposition for the diffident male. You may have
- found this yourself?"
- "Well, as a matter of fact," admitted the young man, "now I come to
- think of it I have noticed that Genevieve has shown me a bit more
- respect since she took up the game. When I drive 230 yards after she
- had taken six sloshes to cover fifty, I sometimes think that a new
- light comes into her eyes."
- "Exactly," said the Sage.
- * * * * *
- From earliest youth (said the Oldest Member) Ramsden Waters had always
- been of a shrinking nature. He seemed permanently scared. Possibly his
- nurse had frightened him with tales of horror in his babyhood. If so,
- she must have been the Edgar Allan Poe of her sex, for, by the time he
- reached men's estate, Ramsden Waters had about as much ferocity and
- self-assertion as a blanc mange. Even with other men he was noticeably
- timid, and with women he comported himself in a manner that roused
- their immediate scorn and antagonism. He was one of those men who fall
- over their feet and start apologizing for themselves the moment they
- see a woman. His idea of conversing with a girl was to perspire and tie
- himself into knots, making the while a strange gurgling sound like the
- language of some primitive tribe. If ever a remark of any coherence
- emerged from his tangled vocal cords it dealt with the weather, and he
- immediately apologized and qualified it. To such a man women are
- merciless, and it speedily became an article of faith with the feminine
- population of this locality that Ramsden Waters was an unfortunate
- incident and did not belong. Finally, after struggling for a time to
- keep up a connection in social circles, he gave it up and became a sort
- of hermit.
- I think that caricature I just showed you weighed rather heavily on the
- poor fellow. Just as he was nerving himself to make another attempt to
- enter society, he would catch sight of it and say to himself, "What
- hope is there for a man with a face like that?" These caricaturists are
- too ready to wound people simply in order to raise a laugh. Personally
- I am broad-minded enough to smile at that portrait of myself. It has
- given me great enjoyment, though why the committee permits it to--But
- then, of course, it isn't a bit like, whereas that of Ramsden Waters
- not only gave the man's exact appearance, very little exaggerated, but
- laid bare his very soul. That portrait is the portrait of a chump, and
- such Ramsden Waters undeniably was.
- By the end of the first year in the neighbourhood, Ramsden, as I say,
- had become practically a hermit. He lived all by himself in a house
- near the fifteenth green, seeing nobody, going nowhere. His only solace
- was golf. His late father had given him an excellent education, and,
- even as early as his seventeenth year, I believe, he was going round
- difficult courses in par. Yet even this admirable gift, which might
- have done him social service, was rendered negligible by the fact that
- he was too shy and shrinking to play often with other men. As a rule,
- he confined himself to golfing by himself in the mornings and late
- evenings when the links were more or less deserted. Yes, in his
- twenty-ninth year, Ramsden Waters had sunk to the depth of becoming a
- secret golfer.
- One lovely morning in summer, a scented morning of green and blue and
- gold, when the birds sang in the trees and the air had that limpid
- clearness which makes the first hole look about 100 yards long instead
- of 345, Ramsden Waters, alone as ever, stood on the first tee
- addressing his ball. For a space he waggled masterfully, then, drawing
- his club back with a crisp swish, brought it down. And, as he did so, a
- voice behind him cried:
- "Bing!"
- Ramsden's driver wabbled at the last moment. The ball flopped weakly
- among the trees on the right of the course. Ramsden turned to perceive,
- standing close beside him, a small fat boy in a sailor suit. There was
- a pause.
- "Rotten!" said the boy austerely.
- Ramsden gulped. And then suddenly he saw that the boy was not alone.
- About a medium approach-putt distance, moving gracefully and languidly
- towards him, was a girl of such pronounced beauty that Ramsden Waters's
- heart looped the loop twice in rapid succession. It was the first time
- that he had seen Eunice Bray, and, like most men who saw her for the
- first time, he experienced the sensations of one in an express lift at
- the tenth floor going down who has left the majority of his internal
- organs up on the twenty-second. He felt a dazed emptiness. The world
- swam before his eyes.
- You yourself saw Eunice just now: and, though you are in a sense
- immune, being engaged to a charming girl of your own, I noticed that
- you unconsciously braced yourself up and tried to look twice as
- handsome as nature ever intended you to. You smirked and, if you had a
- moustache, you would have twiddled it. You can imagine, then, the
- effect which this vision of loveliness had on lonely, diffident Ramsden
- Waters. It got right in amongst him.
- "I'm afraid my little brother spoiled your stroke," said Eunice. She
- did not speak at all apologetically, but rather as a goddess might have
- spoken to a swineherd.
- Ramsden yammered noiselessly. As always in the presence of the opposite
- sex, and more than ever now, his vocal cords appeared to have tied
- themselves in a knot which would have baffled a sailor and might have
- perplexed Houdini. He could not even gargle.
- "He is very fond of watching golf," said the girl.
- She took the boy by the hand, and was about to lead him off, when
- Ramsden miraculously recovered speech.
- "Would he like to come round with me?" he croaked. How he had managed
- to acquire the nerve to make the suggestion he could never understand.
- I suppose that in certain supreme moments a sort of desperate
- recklessness descends on nervous men.
- "How very kind of you!" said the girl indifferently. "But I'm afraid----"
- "I want to go!" shrilled the boy. "I want to go!"
- Fond as Eunice Bray was of her little brother, I imagine that the
- prospect of having him taken off her hands on a fine summer morning,
- when all nature urged her to sit in the shade on the terrace and read a
- book, was not unwelcome.
- "It would be very kind of you if you would let him," said Eunice. "He
- wasn't able to go to the circus last week, and it was a great
- disappointment; this will do instead."
- She turned toward the terrace, and Ramsden, his head buzzing, tottered
- into the jungle to find his ball, followed by the boy.
- I have never been able to extract full particulars of that morning's
- round from Ramsden. If you speak of it to him, he will wince and change
- the subject. Yet he seems to have had the presence of mind to pump
- Wilberforce as to the details of his home life, and by the end of the
- round he had learned that Eunice and her brother had just come to visit
- an aunt who lived in the neighbourhood. Their house was not far from
- the links; Eunice was not engaged to be married; and the aunt made a
- hobby of collecting dry seaweed, which she pressed and pasted in an
- album. One sometimes thinks that aunts live entirely for pleasure.
- At the end of the round Ramsden staggered on to the terrace, tripping
- over his feet, and handed Wilberforce back in good condition. Eunice,
- who had just reached the chapter where the hero decides to give up all
- for love, thanked him perfunctorily without looking up from her book;
- and so ended the first spasm of Ramsden Waters's life romance.
- * * * * *
- There are few things more tragic than the desire of the moth for the
- star; and it is a curious fact that the spectacle of a star almost
- invariably fills the most sensible moth with thoughts above his
- station. No doubt, if Ramsden Waters had stuck around and waited long
- enough there might have come his way in the fullness of time some nice,
- homely girl with a squint and a good disposition who would have been
- about his form. In his modest day dreams he had aspired to nothing
- higher. But the sight of Eunice Bray seemed to have knocked all the
- sense out of the man. He must have known that he stood no chance of
- becoming anything to her other than a handy means of getting rid of
- little Wilberforce now and again. Why, the very instant that Eunice
- appeared in the place, every eligible bachelor for miles around her
- tossed his head with a loud, snorting sound, and galloped madly in her
- direction. Dashing young devils they were, handsome, well-knit fellows
- with the figures of Greek gods and the faces of movie heroes. Any one
- of them could have named his own price from the advertisers of collars.
- They were the sort of young men you see standing grandly beside the
- full-page picture of the seven-seater Magnifico car in the magazines.
- And it was against this field that Ramsden Waters, the man with the
- unshuffled face, dared to pit his feeble personality. One weeps.
- Something of the magnitude of the task he had undertaken must have come
- home to Ramsden at a very early point in the proceedings. At Eunice's
- home, at the hour when women receive callers, he was from the start a
- mere unconsidered unit in the mob scene. While his rivals clustered
- thickly about the girl, he was invariably somewhere on the outskirts
- listening limply to the aunt. I imagine that seldom has any young man
- had such golden opportunities of learning all about dried seaweed.
- Indeed, by the end of the month Ramsden Waters could not have known
- more about seaweed if he had been a deep sea fish. And yet he was not
- happy. He was in a position, if he had been at a dinner party and
- things had got a bit slow, to have held the table spellbound with the
- first hand information about dried seaweed, straight from the stable;
- yet nevertheless he chafed. His soul writhed and sickened within him.
- He lost weight and went right off his approach shots. I confess that my
- heart bled for the man.
- His only consolation was that nobody else, not even the fellows who
- worked their way right through the jam and got seats in the front row
- where they could glare into her eyes and hang on her lips and all that
- sort of thing, seemed to be making any better progress.
- And so matters went on till one day Eunice decided to take up golf. Her
- motive for doing this was, I believe, simply because Kitty Manders, who
- had won a small silver cup at a monthly handicap, receiving thirty-six,
- was always dragging the conversation round to this trophy, and if there
- was one firm article in Eunice Bray's simple creed it was that she
- would be hanged if she let Kitty, who was by way of being a rival on a
- small scale, put anything over on her. I do not defend Eunice, but
- women are women, and I doubt if any of them really take up golf in that
- holy, quest-of-the-grail spirit which animates men. I have known girls
- to become golfers as an excuse for wearing pink jumpers, and one at
- least who did it because she had read in the beauty hints in the
- evening paper that it made you lissome. Girls will be girls.
- Her first lessons Eunice received from the professional, but after that
- she saved money by distributing herself among her hordes of admirers,
- who were only too willing to give up good matches to devote themselves
- to her tuition. By degrees she acquired a fair skill and a confidence
- in her game which was not altogether borne out by results. From Ramsden
- Waters she did not demand a lesson. For one thing it never occurred to
- her that so poor-spirited a man could be of any use at the game, and
- for another Ramsden was always busy tooling round with little
- Wilberforce.
- Yet it was with Ramsden that she was paired in the first competition
- for which she entered, the annual mixed foursomes. And it was on the
- same evening that the list of the draw went up on the notice board that
- Ramsden proposed.
- The mind of a man in love works in strange ways. To you and to me there
- would seem to be no reason why the fact that Eunice's name and his own
- had been drawn out of a hat together should so impress Ramsden, but he
- looked on it as an act of God. It seemed to him to draw them close
- together, to set up a sort of spiritual affinity. In a word, it acted
- on the poor fellow like a tonic, and that very night he went around to
- her house, and having, after a long and extremely interesting
- conversation with her aunt, contrived to get her alone, coughed eleven
- times in a strangled sort of way, and suggested that the wedding bells
- should ring out.
- Eunice was more startled than angry.
- "Of course, I'm tremendously complimented, Mr.----" She had to pause to
- recall the name. "Mr.----"
- "Waters," said Ramsden, humbly.
- "Of course, yes. Mr. Waters. As I say, it's a great compliment----"
- "Not at all!"
- "A great compliment----"
- "No, no!" murmured Ramsden obsequiously.
- "I wish you wouldn't interrupt!" snapped Eunice with irritation. No
- girl likes to have to keep going back and trying over her speeches.
- "It's a great compliment, but it is quite impossible."
- "Just as you say, of course," agreed Ramsden.
- "What," demanded Eunice, "have you to offer me? I don't mean money. I
- mean something more spiritual. What is there in you, Mr. Walter----"
- "Waters."
- "Mr. Waters. What is there in you that would repay a girl for giving up
- the priceless boon of freedom?"
- "I know a lot about dried seaweed," suggested Ramsden hopefully.
- Eunice shook her head.
- "No," she said, "it is quite impossible. You have paid me the greatest
- compliment a man can pay a woman, Mr. Waterson----"
- "Waters," said Ramsden. "I'll write it down for you."
- "Please don't trouble. I am afraid we shall never meet again----"
- "But we are partners in the mixed foursomes tomorrow."
- "Oh, yes, so we are!" said Eunice. "Well, mind you play up. I want to
- win a cup more than anything on earth."
- "Ah!" said Ramsden, "if only I could win what I want to win more than
- anything else on earth! You, I mean," he added, to make his meaning
- clear. "If I could win you----" His tongue tied itself in a bow knot
- round his uvula, and he could say no more. He moved slowly to the door,
- paused with his fingers on the handle for one last look over his
- shoulder, and walked silently into the cupboard where Eunice's aunt
- kept her collection of dried seaweed.
- His second start was favoured with greater luck, and he found himself
- out in the hall, and presently in the cool air of the night, with the
- stars shining down on him. Had those silent stars ever shone down on a
- more broken-hearted man? Had the cool air of the night ever fanned a
- more fevered brow? Ah, yes! Or, rather, ah no!
- There was not a very large entry for the mixed foursomes competition.
- In my experience there seldom is. Men are as a rule idealists, and wish
- to keep their illusions regarding women intact, and it is difficult for
- the most broad-minded man to preserve a chivalrous veneration for the
- sex after a woman has repeatedly sliced into the rough and left him a
- difficult recovery. Women, too--I am not speaking of the occasional
- champions, but of the average woman, the one with the handicap of 33,
- who plays in high-heeled shoes--are apt to giggle when they foozle out
- of a perfect lie, and this makes for misogyny. Only eight couples
- assembled on the tenth tee (where our foursomes matches start) on the
- morning after Ramsden Waters had proposed to Eunice. Six of these were
- negligible, consisting of males of average skill and young women who
- played golf because it kept them out in the fresh air. Looking over the
- field, Ramsden felt that the only serious rivalry was to be feared from
- Marcella Bingley and her colleague, a 16-handicap youth named George
- Perkins, with whom they were paired for the opening round. George was a
- pretty indifferent performer, but Marcella, a weather-beaten female
- with bobbed hair and the wrists of a welterweight pugilist, had once
- appeared in the women's open championship and swung a nasty iron.
- Ramsden watched her drive a nice, clean shot down the middle of the
- fairway, and spoke earnestly to Eunice. His heart was in this
- competition, for, though the first prize in the mixed foursomes does
- not perhaps entitle the winners to a place in the hall of fame, Ramsden
- had the soul of the true golfer. And the true golfer wants to win
- whenever he starts, whether he is playing in a friendly round or in the
- open championship.
- "What we've got to do is to play steadily," he said. "Don't try any
- fancy shots. Go for safety. Miss Bingley is a tough proposition, but
- George Perkins is sure to foozle a few, and if we play safe we've got
- 'em cold. The others don't count."
- You notice something odd about this speech. Something in it strikes you
- as curious. Precisely. It affected Eunice Bray in the same fashion. In
- the first place, it contains forty-four words, some of them of two
- syllables, others of even greater length. In the second place, it was
- spoken crisply, almost commandingly, without any of that hesitation and
- stammering which usually characterized Ramsden Waters's utterances.
- Eunice was puzzled. She was also faintly resentful. True, there was not
- a word in what he had said that was calculated to bring the blush of
- shame to the cheek of modesty; nevertheless, she felt vaguely that
- Ramsden Waters had exceeded the limits. She had been prepared for a
- gurgling Ramsden Waters, a Ramsden Waters who fell over his large feet
- and perspired; but here was a Ramsden Waters who addressed her not
- merely as an equal, but with more than a touch of superiority. She eyed
- him coldly, but he had turned to speak to little Wilberforce, who was
- to accompany them on the round.
- "And you, my lad," said Ramsden curtly, "you kindly remember that this
- is a competition, and keep your merry flow of conversation as much as
- possible to yourself. You've got a bad habit of breaking into small
- talk when a man's addressing the ball."
- "If you think that my brother will be in the way----" began Eunice
- coldly.
- "Oh, I don't mind him coming round," said Ramsden, "if he keeps quiet."
- Eunice gasped. She had not played enough golf to understand how that
- noblest of games changes a man's whole nature when on the links. She
- was thinking of something crushing to say to him, when he advanced to
- the tee to drive off.
- He drove a perfect ball, hard and low with a lot of roll. Even Eunice
- was impressed.
- "Good shot, partner!" she said.
- Ramsden was apparently unaware that she had spoken. He was gazing down
- the fairway with his club over his left shoulder in an attitude almost
- identical with that of Sandy McBean in the plate labelled "The
- Drive--Correct Finish", to face page twenty-four of his monumental
- work, "How to Become a Scratch Player Your First Season by Studying
- Photographs". Eunice bit her lip. She was piqued. She felt as if she
- had patted the head of a pet lamb, and the lamb had turned and bitten
- her in the finger.
- "I said, 'Good shot, partner!'" she repeated coldly.
- "Yes," said Ramsden, "but don't talk. It prevents one concentrating."
- He turned to Wilberforce. "And don't let me have to tell you that
- again!" he said.
- "Wilberforce has been like a mouse!"
- "That is what I complain of," said Ramsden. "Mice make a beastly
- scratching sound, and that's what he was doing when I drove that ball."
- "He was only playing with the sand in the tee box."
- "Well, if he does it again, I shall be reluctantly compelled to take
- steps."
- They walked in silence to where the ball had stopped. It was nicely
- perched up on the grass, and to have plunked it on to the green with an
- iron should have been for any reasonable golfer the work of a moment.
- Eunice, however, only succeeded in slicing it feebly into the rough.
- Ramsden reached for his niblick and plunged into the bushes. And,
- presently, as if it had been shot up by some convulsion of nature, the
- ball, accompanied on the early stages of its journey by about a pound
- of mixed mud, grass, and pebbles, soared through the air and fell on
- the green. But the mischief had been done. Miss Bingley, putting
- forcefully, put the opposition ball down for a four and won the hole.
- Eunice now began to play better, and, as Ramsden was on the top of his
- game, a ding-dong race ensued for the remainder of the first nine
- holes. The Bingley-Perkins combination, owing to some inspired work by
- the female of the species, managed to keep their lead up to the tricky
- ravine hole, but there George Perkins, as might have been expected of
- him, deposited the ball right in among the rocks, and Ramsden and
- Eunice drew level. The next four holes were halved and they reached the
- club-house with no advantage to either side. Here there was a pause
- while Miss Bingley went to the professional's shop to have a tack put
- into the leather of her mashie, which had worked loose. George Perkins
- and little Wilberforce, who believed in keeping up their strength,
- melted silently away in the direction of the refreshment bar, and
- Ramsden and Eunice were alone.
- * * * * *
- The pique which Eunice had felt at the beginning of the game had
- vanished by now. She was feeling extremely pleased with her performance
- on the last few holes, and would have been glad to go into the matter
- fully. Also, she was conscious of a feeling not perhaps of respect so
- much as condescending tolerance towards Ramsden. He might be a pretty
- minus quantity in a drawing-room or at a dance, but in a bunker or out
- in the open with a cleek, Eunice felt, you'd be surprised. She was just
- about to address him in a spirit of kindliness, when he spoke.
- "Better keep your brassey in the bag on the next nine," he said. "Stick
- to the iron. The great thing is to keep 'em straight!"
- Eunice gasped. Indeed, had she been of a less remarkable beauty one
- would have said that she snorted. The sky turned black, and all her
- amiability was swept away in a flood of fury. The blood left her face
- and surged back in a rush of crimson. You are engaged to be married and
- I take it that there exists between you and your _fiancee_ the
- utmost love and trust and understanding; but would you have the nerve,
- could you summon up the cold, callous gall to tell your Genevieve that
- she wasn't capable of using her wooden clubs? I think not. Yet this was
- what Ramsden Waters had told Eunice, and the delicately nurtured girl
- staggered before the coarse insult. Her refined, sensitive nature was
- all churned up.
- Ever since she had made her first drive at golf, she had prided herself
- on her use of the wood. Her brother and her brassey were the only
- things she loved. And here was this man deliberately.... Eunice choked.
- "Mr. Waters!"
- Before they could have further speech George Perkins and little
- Wilberforce ambled in a bloated way out of the clubhouse.
- "I've had three ginger ales," observed the boy. "Where do we go from
- here?"
- "Our honour," said Ramsden. "Shoot!"
- Eunice took out her driver without a word. Her little figure was tense
- with emotion. She swung vigorously, and pulled the ball far out on to
- the fairway of the ninth hole.
- "Even off the tee," said Ramsden, "you had better use an iron. You must
- keep 'em straight."
- Their eyes met. Hers were glittering with the fury of a woman scorned.
- His were cold and hard. And, suddenly, as she looked at his awful,
- pale, set golf face, something seemed to snap in Eunice. A strange
- sensation of weakness and humility swept over her. So might the cave
- woman have felt when, with her back against a cliff and unable to
- dodge, she watched her suitor take his club in the interlocking grip,
- and, after a preliminary waggle, start his back swing.
- The fact was that, all her life, Eunice had been accustomed to the
- homage of men. From the time she had put her hair up every man she had
- met had grovelled before her, and she had acquired a mental attitude
- toward the other sex which was a blend of indifference and contempt.
- For the cringing specimens who curled up and died all over the
- hearthrug if she spoke a cold word to them she had nothing but scorn.
- She dreamed wistfully of those brusque cavemen of whom she read in the
- novels which she took out of the village circulating library. The
- female novelist who was at that time her favourite always supplied with
- each chunk of wholesome and invigorating fiction one beetle-browed hero
- with a grouch and a scowl, who rode wild horses over the countryside
- till they foamed at the mouth, and treated women like dirt. That,
- Eunice had thought yearningly, as she talked to youths whose spines
- turned to gelatine at one glance from her bright eyes, was the sort of
- man she wanted to meet and never seemed to come across.
- Of all the men whose acquaintance she had made recently she had
- despised Ramsden Waters most. Where others had grovelled he had tied
- himself into knots. Where others had gazed at her like sheep he had
- goggled at her like a kicked spaniel. She had only permitted him to
- hang round because he seemed so fond of little Wilberforce. And here he
- was, ordering her about and piercing her with gimlet eyes, for all the
- world as if he were Claude Delamere, in the thirty-second chapter of
- "The Man of Chilled Steel", the one where Claude drags Lady Matilda
- around the smoking-room by her hair because she gave the rose from her
- bouquet to the Italian count.
- She was half-cowed, half-resentful.
- "Mr Winklethorpe told me I was very good with the wooden clubs," she
- said defiantly.
- "He's a great kidder," said Ramsden.
- He went down the hill to where his ball lay. Eunice proceeded direct
- for the green. Much as she told herself that she hated this man, she
- never questioned his ability to get there with his next shot.
- George Perkins, who had long since forfeited any confidence which his
- partner might have reposed in him, had topped his drive, leaving Miss
- Bingley a difficult second out of a sandy ditch. The hole was halved.
- The match went on. Ramsden won the short hole, laying his ball dead
- with a perfect iron shot, but at the next, the long dog-leg hole, Miss
- Bingley regained the honour. They came to the last all square.
- As the match had started on the tenth tee, the last hole to be
- negotiated was, of course, what in the ordinary run of human affairs is
- the ninth, possibly the trickiest on the course. As you know, it is
- necessary to carry with one's initial wallop that combination of stream
- and lake into which so many well meant drives have flopped. This done,
- the player proceeds up the face of a steep slope, to find himself
- ultimately on a green which looks like the sea in the storm scene of a
- melodrama. It heaves and undulates, and is altogether a nasty thing to
- have happen to one at the end of a gruelling match. But it is the first
- shot, the drive, which is the real test, for the water and the trees
- form a mental hazard of unquestionable toughness.
- George Perkins, as he addressed his ball for the vital stroke,
- manifestly wabbled. He was scared to the depths of his craven soul. He
- tried to pray, but all he could remember was the hymn for those in
- peril on the deep, into which category, he feared, his ball would
- shortly fall. Breathing a few bars of this, he swung. There was a
- musical click, and the ball, singing over the water like a bird,
- breasted the hill like a homing aeroplane and fell in the centre of the
- fairway within easy distance of the plateau green.
- "Nice work, partner," said Miss Bingley, speaking for the first and
- last time in the course of the proceedings.
- George unravelled himself with a modest simper. He felt like a gambler
- who has placed his all on a number at roulette and sees the white ball
- tumble into the correct compartment.
- Eunice moved to the tee. In the course of the last eight holes the
- girl's haughty soul had been rudely harrowed. She had foozled two
- drives and three approach shots and had missed a short putt on the last
- green but three. She had that consciousness of sin which afflicts the
- golfer off his game, that curious self-loathing which humbles the
- proudest. Her knees felt weak and all nature seemed to bellow at her
- that this was where she was going to blow up with a loud report.
- Even as her driver rose above her shoulder she was acutely aware that
- she was making eighteen out of the twenty-three errors which complicate
- the drive at golf. She knew that her head had swayed like some
- beautiful flower in a stiff breeze. The heel of her left foot was
- pointing down the course. Her grip had shifted, and her wrists felt
- like sticks of boiled asparagus. As the club began to descend she
- perceived that she had underestimated the total of her errors. And when
- the ball, badly topped, bounded down the slope and entered the muddy
- water like a timid diver on a cold morning she realized that she had a
- full hand. There are twenty-three things which it is possible to do
- wrong in the drive, and she had done them all.
- Silently Ramsden Waters made a tee and placed thereon a new ball. He
- was a golfer who rarely despaired, but he was playing three, and his
- opponents' ball would undoubtedly be on the green, possibly even dead,
- in two. Nevertheless, perhaps, by a supreme drive, and one or two
- miracles later on, the game might be saved. He concentrated his whole
- soul on the ball.
- I need scarcely tell you that Ramsden Waters pressed....
- Swish came the driver. The ball, fanned by the wind, rocked a little on
- the tee, then settled down in its original position. Ramsden Waters,
- usually the most careful of players, had missed the globe.
- For a moment there was a silence--a silence which Ramsden had to strive
- with an effort almost physically painful not to break. Rich oaths
- surged to his lips, and blistering maledictions crashed against the
- back of his clenched teeth.
- The silence was broken by little Wilberforce.
- One can only gather that there lurks in the supposedly innocuous amber
- of ginger ale an elevating something which the temperance reformers
- have overlooked. Wilberforce Bray had, if you remember, tucked away no
- fewer than three in the spot where they would do most good. One
- presumes that the child, with all that stuff surging about inside him,
- had become thoroughly above himself. He uttered a merry laugh.
- "Never hit it!" said little Wilberforce.
- He was kneeling beside the tee box as he spoke, and now, as one who has
- seen all that there is to be seen and turns, sated, to other
- amusements, he moved round and began to play with the sand. The
- spectacle of his alluring trouser seat was one which a stronger man
- would have found it hard to resist. To Ramsden Waters it had the aspect
- of a formal invitation. For one moment his number II golf shoe, as
- supplied to all the leading professionals, wavered in mid-air, then
- crashed home.
- Eunice screamed.
- "How dare you kick my brother!"
- Ramsden faced her, stern and pale.
- "Madam," he said, "in similar circumstances I would have kicked the
- Archangel Gabriel!"
- Then, stooping to his ball, he picked it up.
- "The match is yours," he said to Miss Bingley, who, having paid no
- attention at all to the drama which had just concluded, was practising
- short chip shots with her mashie-niblick.
- He bowed coldly to Eunice, cast one look of sombre satisfaction at
- little Wilberforce, who was painfully extricating himself from a bed of
- nettles into which he had rolled, and strode off. He crossed the bridge
- over the water and stalked up the hill.
- Eunice watched him go, spellbound. Her momentary spurt of wrath at the
- kicking of her brother had died away, and she wished she had thought of
- doing it herself.
- How splendid he looked, she felt, as she watched Ramsden striding up to
- the club-house--just like Carruthers Mordyke after he had flung
- Ermyntrude Vanstone from him in chapter forty-one of "Gray Eyes That
- Gleam". Her whole soul went out to him. This was the sort of man she
- wanted as a partner in life. How grandly he would teach her to play
- golf. It had sickened her when her former instructors, prefacing their
- criticism with glutinous praise, had mildly suggested that some people
- found it a good thing to keep the head still when driving and that
- though her methods were splendid it might be worth trying. They had
- spoken of her keeping her eye on the ball as if she were doing the ball
- a favour. What she wanted was a great, strong, rough brute of a fellow
- who would tell her not to move her damned head; a rugged Viking of a
- chap who, if she did not keep her eye on the ball, would black it for
- her. And Ramsden Waters was such a one. He might not look like a
- Viking, but after all it is the soul that counts and, as this
- afternoon's experience had taught her, Ramsden Waters had a soul that
- seemed to combine in equal proportions the outstanding characteristics
- of Nero, a wildcat, and the second mate of a tramp steamer.
- * * * * *
- That night Ramsden Walters sat in his study, a prey to the gloomiest
- emotions. The gold had died out of him by now, and he was reproaching
- himself bitterly for having ruined for ever his chance of winning the
- only girl he had ever loved. How could she forgive him for his
- brutality? How could she overlook treatment which would have caused
- comment in the stokehold of a cattle ship? He groaned and tried to
- forget his sorrows by forcing himself to read.
- But the choicest thoughts of the greatest writers had no power to grip
- him. He tried Vardon "On the Swing", and the words swam before his
- eyes. He turned to Taylor "On the Chip Shot", and the master's pure
- style seemed laboured and involved. He found solace neither in Braid
- "On the Pivot" nor in Duncan "On the Divot". He was just about to give
- it up and go to bed though it was only nine o'clock, when the telephone
- bell rang.
- "Hello!"
- "Is that you, Mr. Waters? This is Eunice Bray." The receiver shook in
- Ramsden's hand. "I've just remembered. Weren't we talking about
- something last night? Didn't you ask me to marry you or something? I
- know it was something."
- Ramsden gulped three times.
- "I did," he replied hollowly.
- "We didn't settle anything, did we?"
- "Eh?"
- "I say, we sort of left it kind of open."
- "Yuk!"
- "Well, would it bore you awfully," said Eunice's soft voice, "to come
- round now and go on talking it over?"
- Ramsden tottered.
- "We shall be quite alone," said Eunice. "Little Wilberforce has gone to
- bed with a headache."
- Ramsden paused a moment to disentangle his tongue from the back of his
- neck.
- "I'll be right over!" he said huskily.
- 10
- _The Coming of Gowf_
- PROLOGUE
- After we had sent in our card and waited for a few hours in the marbled
- ante-room, a bell rang and the major-domo, parting the priceless
- curtains, ushered us in to where the editor sat writing at his desk. We
- advanced on all fours, knocking our head reverently on the Aubusson
- carpet.
- "Well?" he said at length, laying down his jewelled pen.
- "We just looked in," we said, humbly, "to ask if it would be all right
- if we sent you an historical story."
- "The public does not want historical stories," he said, frowning
- coldly.
- "Ah, but the public hasn't seen one of ours!" we replied.
- The editor placed a cigarette in a holder presented to him by a
- reigning monarch, and lit it with a match from a golden box, the gift
- of the millionaire president of the Amalgamated League of Working
- Plumbers.
- "What this magazine requires," he said, "is red-blooded,
- one-hundred-per-cent dynamic stuff, palpitating with warm human
- interest and containing a strong, poignant love-motive."
- "That," we replied, "is us all over, Mabel."
- "What I need at the moment, however, is a golf story."
- "By a singular coincidence, ours is a golf story."
- "Ha! say you so?" said the editor, a flicker of interest passing over
- his finely-chiselled features. "Then you may let me see it."
- He kicked us in the face, and we withdrew.
- THE STORY
- On the broad terrace outside his palace, overlooking the fair expanse
- of the Royal gardens, King Merolchazzar of Oom stood leaning on the low
- parapet, his chin in his hand and a frown on his noble face. The day
- was fine, and a light breeze bore up to him from the garden below a
- fragrant scent of flowers. But, for all the pleasure it seemed to give
- him, it might have been bone-fertilizer.
- The fact is, King Merolchazzar was in love, and his suit was not
- prospering. Enough to upset any man.
- Royal love affairs in those days were conducted on the correspondence
- system. A monarch, hearing good reports of a neighbouring princess,
- would despatch messengers with gifts to her Court, beseeching an
- interview. The Princess would name a date, and a formal meeting would
- take place; after which everything usually buzzed along pretty
- smoothly. But in the case of King Merolchazzar's courtship of the
- Princess of the Outer Isles there had been a regrettable hitch. She had
- acknowledged the gifts, saying that they were just what she had wanted
- and how had he guessed, and had added that, as regarded a meeting, she
- would let him know later. Since that day no word had come from her, and
- a gloomy spirit prevailed in the capital. At the Courtiers' Club, the
- meeting-place of the aristocracy of Oom, five to one in _pazazas_
- was freely offered against Merolchazzar's chances, but found no takers;
- while in the taverns of the common people, where less conservative odds
- were always to be had, you could get a snappy hundred to eight. "For in
- good sooth," writes a chronicler of the time on a half-brick and a
- couple of paving-stones which have survived to this day, "it did indeed
- begin to appear as though our beloved monarch, the son of the sun and
- the nephew of the moon, had been handed the bitter fruit of the
- citron."
- The quaint old idiom is almost untranslatable, but one sees what he
- means.
- * * * * *
- As the King stood sombrely surveying the garden, his attention was
- attracted by a small, bearded man with bushy eyebrows and a face like a
- walnut, who stood not far away on a gravelled path flanked by rose
- bushes. For some minutes he eyed this man in silence, then he called to
- the Grand Vizier, who was standing in the little group of courtiers and
- officials at the other end of the terrace. The bearded man, apparently
- unconscious of the Royal scrutiny, had placed a rounded stone on the
- gravel, and was standing beside it making curious passes over it with
- his hoe. It was this singular behaviour that had attracted the King's
- attention. Superficially it seemed silly, and yet Merolchazzar had a
- curious feeling that there was a deep, even a holy, meaning behind the
- action.
- "Who," he inquired, "is that?"
- "He is one of your Majesty's gardeners," replied the Vizier.
- "I don't remember seeing him before. Who is he?"
- The Vizier was a kind-hearted man, and he hesitated for a moment.
- "It seems a hard thing to say of anyone, your Majesty," he replied,
- "but he is a Scotsman. One of your Majesty's invincible admirals
- recently made a raid on the inhospitable coast of that country at a
- spot known to the natives as S'nandrews and brought away this man."
- "What does he think he's doing?" asked the King, as the bearded one
- slowly raised the hoe above his right shoulder, slightly bending the
- left knee as he did so.
- "It is some species of savage religious ceremony, your Majesty.
- According to the admiral, the dunes by the seashore where he landed
- were covered with a multitude of men behaving just as this man is
- doing. They had sticks in their hands and they struck with these at
- small round objects. And every now and again----"
- "Fo-o-ore!" called a gruff voice from below.
- "And every now and again," went on the Vizier, "they would utter the
- strange melancholy cry which you have just heard. It is a species of
- chant."
- The Vizier broke off. The hoe had descended on the stone, and the
- stone, rising in a graceful arc, had sailed through the air and fallen
- within a foot of where the King stood.
- "Hi!" exclaimed the Vizier.
- The man looked up.
- "You mustn't do that! You nearly hit his serene graciousness the King!"
- "Mphm!" said the bearded man, nonchalantly, and began to wave his hoe
- mystically over another stone.
- Into the King's careworn face there had crept a look of interest,
- almost of excitement.
- "What god does he hope to propitiate by these rites?" he asked.
- "The deity, I learn from your Majesty's admiral is called Gowf."
- "Gowf? Gowf?" King Merolchazzar ran over in his mind the muster-roll of
- the gods of Oom. There were sixty-seven of them, but Gowf was not of
- their number. "It is a strange religion," he murmured. "A strange
- religion, indeed. But, by Belus, distinctly attractive. I have an idea
- that Oom could do with a religion like that. It has a zip to it. A sort
- of fascination, if you know what I mean. It looks to me extraordinarily
- like what the Court physician ordered. I will talk to this fellow and
- learn more of these holy ceremonies."
- And, followed by the Vizier, the King made his way into the garden. The
- Vizier was now in a state of some apprehension. He was exercised in his
- mind as to the effect which the embracing of a new religion by the King
- might have on the formidable Church party. It would be certain to cause
- displeasure among the priesthood; and in those days it was a ticklish
- business to offend the priesthood, even for a monarch. And, if
- Merolchazzar had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little tactless in
- his dealings with that powerful body. Only a few mornings back the High
- Priest of Hec had taken the Vizier aside to complain about the quality
- of the meat which the King had been using lately for his sacrifices. He
- might be a child in worldly matters, said the High Priest, but if the
- King supposed that he did not know the difference between home-grown
- domestic and frozen imported foreign, it was time his Majesty was
- disabused of the idea. If, on top of this little unpleasantness, King
- Merolchazzar were to become an adherent of this new Gowf, the Vizier
- did not know what might not happen.
- The King stood beside the bearded foreigner, watching him closely. The
- second stone soared neatly on to the terrace. Merolchazzar uttered an
- excited cry. His eyes were glowing, and he breathed quickly.
- "It doesn't look difficult," he muttered.
- "Hoo's!" said the bearded man.
- "I believe I could do it," went on the King, feverishly. "By the eight
- green gods of the mountain, I believe I could! By the holy fire that
- burns night and day before the altar of Belus, I'm _sure_ I could!
- By Hec, I'm going to do it now! Gimme that hoe!"
- "Toots!" said the bearded man.
- It seemed to the King that the fellow spoke derisively, and his blood
- boiled angrily. He seized the hoe and raised it above his shoulder,
- bracing himself solidly on widely-parted feet. His pose was an exact
- reproduction of the one in which the Court sculptor had depicted him
- when working on the life-size statue ("Our Athletic King") which stood
- in the principal square of the city; but it did not impress the
- stranger. He uttered a discordant laugh.
- "Ye puir gonuph!" he cried, "whitkin' o' a staunce is that?"
- The King was hurt. Hitherto the attitude had been generally admired.
- "It's the way I always stand when killing lions," he said. "'In killing
- lions,'" he added, quoting from the well-known treatise of Nimrod, the
- recognized text-book on the sport, "'the weight at the top of the swing
- should be evenly balanced on both feet.'"
- "Ah, weel, ye're no killing lions the noo. Ye're gowfing."
- A sudden humility descended upon the King. He felt, as so many men were
- to feel in similar circumstances in ages to come, as though he were a
- child looking eagerly for guidance to an all-wise master--a child,
- moreover, handicapped by water on the brain, feet three sizes too large
- for him, and hands consisting mainly of thumbs.
- "O thou of noble ancestors and agreeable disposition!" he said, humbly.
- "Teach me the true way."
- "Use the interlocking grup and keep the staunce a wee bit open and slow
- back, and dinna press or sway the heid and keep yer e'e on the ba'."
- "My which on the what?" said the King, bewildered.
- "I fancy, your Majesty," hazarded the Vizier, "that he is respectfully
- suggesting that your serene graciousness should deign to keep your eye
- on the ball."
- "Oh, ah!" said the King.
- The first golf lesson ever seen in the kingdom of Oom had begun.
- * * * * *
- Up on the terrace, meanwhile, in the little group of courtiers and
- officials, a whispered consultation was in progress. Officially, the
- King's unfortunate love affair was supposed to be a strict secret. But
- you know how it is. These things get about. The Grand Vizier tells the
- Lord High Chamberlain; the Lord High Chamberlain whispers it in
- confidence to the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog;
- the Supreme Hereditary Custodian hands it on to the Exalted Overseer of
- the King's Wardrobe on the understanding that it is to go no farther;
- and, before you know where you are, the varlets and scurvy knaves are
- gossiping about it in the kitchens, and the Society journalists have
- started to carve it out on bricks for the next issue of _Palace
- Prattlings_.
- "The long and short of it is," said the Exalted Overseer of the King's
- Wardrobe, "we must cheer him up."
- There was a murmur of approval. In those days of easy executions it was
- no light matter that a monarch should be a prey to gloom.
- "But how?" queried the Lord High Chamberlain.
- "I know," said the Supreme Hereditary Custodian of the Royal Pet Dog.
- "Try him with the minstrels."
- "Here! Why us?" protested the leader of the minstrels.
- "Don't be silly!" said the Lord High Chamberlain. "It's for your good
- just as much as ours. He was asking only last night why he never got
- any music nowadays. He told me to find out whether you supposed he paid
- you simply to eat and sleep, because if so he knew what to do about
- it."
- "Oh, in that case!" The leader of the minstrels started nervously.
- Collecting his assistants and tip-toeing down the garden, he took up
- his stand a few feet in Merolchazzar's rear, just as that much-enduring
- monarch, after twenty-five futile attempts, was once more addressing
- his stone.
- Lyric writers in those days had not reached the supreme pitch of
- excellence which has been produced by modern musical comedy. The art
- was in its infancy then, and the best the minstrels could do was
- this--and they did it just as Merolchazzar, raising the hoe with
- painful care, reached the top of his swing and started down:
- _"Oh, tune the string and let us sing
- Our godlike, great, and glorious King!
- He's a bear! He's a bear! He's a bear!"_
- There were sixteen more verses, touching on their ruler's prowess in
- the realms of sport and war, but they were not destined to be sung on
- that circuit. King Merolchazzar jumped like a stung bullock, lifted his
- head, and missed the globe for the twenty-sixth time. He spun round on
- the minstrels, who were working pluckily through their song of praise:
- _"Oh, may his triumphs never cease!
- He has the strength of ten!
- First in war, first in peace,
- First in the hearts of his countrymen."_
- "Get out!" roared the King.
- "Your Majesty?" quavered the leader of the minstrels.
- "Make a noise like an egg and beat it!" (Again one finds the
- chronicler's idiom impossible to reproduce in modern speech, and must
- be content with a literal translation.) "By the bones of my ancestors,
- it's a little hard! By the beard of the sacred goat, it's tough! What
- in the name of Belus and Hec do you mean, you yowling misfits, by
- starting that sort of stuff when a man's swinging? I was just shaping
- to hit it right that time when you butted in, you----"
- The minstrels melted away. The bearded man patted the fermenting
- monarch paternally on the shoulder.
- "Ma mannie," he said, "ye may no' be a gowfer yet, but hoots! ye're
- learning the language fine!"
- King Merolchazzar's fury died away. He simpered modestly at these words
- of commendation, the first his bearded preceptor had uttered. With
- exemplary patience he turned to address the stone for the
- twenty-seventh time.
- That night it was all over the city that the King had gone crazy over a
- new religion, and the orthodox shook their heads.
- * * * * *
- We of the present day, living in the midst of a million marvels of a
- complex civilization, have learned to adjust ourselves to conditions
- and to take for granted phenomena which in an earlier and less advanced
- age would have caused the profoundest excitement and even alarm. We
- accept without comment the telephone, the automobile, and the wireless
- telegraph, and we are unmoved by the spectacle of our fellow human
- beings in the grip of the first stages of golf fever. Far otherwise was
- it with the courtiers and officials about the Palace of Oom. The
- obsession of the King was the sole topic of conversation.
- Every day now, starting forth at dawn and returning only with the
- falling of darkness, Merolchazzar was out on the Linx, as the outdoor
- temple of the new god was called. In a luxurious house adjoining this
- expanse the bearded Scotsman had been installed, and there he could be
- found at almost any hour of the day fashioning out of holy wood the
- weird implements indispensable to the new religion. As a recognition of
- his services, the King had bestowed upon him a large pension,
- innumerable _kaddiz_ or slaves, and the title of Promoter of the
- King's Happiness, which for the sake of convenience was generally
- shortened to The Pro.
- At present, Oom being a conservative country, the worship of the new
- god had not attracted the public in great numbers. In fact, except for
- the Grand Vizier, who, always a faithful follower of his sovereign's
- fortunes, had taken to Gowf from the start, the courtiers held aloof to
- a man. But the Vizier had thrown himself into the new worship with such
- vigour and earnestness that it was not long before he won from the King
- the title of Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four
- Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirty--a title which
- in ordinary conversation was usually abbreviated to The Dub.
- All these new titles, it should be said, were, so far as the courtiers
- were concerned, a fruitful source of discontent. There were black looks
- and mutinous whispers. The laws of precedence were being disturbed, and
- the courtiers did not like it. It jars a man who for years has had his
- social position all cut and dried--a man, to take an instance at
- random, who, as Second Deputy Shiner of the Royal Hunting Boots, knows
- that his place is just below the Keeper of the Eel-Hounds and just
- above the Second Tenor of the Corps of Minstrels--it jars him, we say,
- to find suddenly that he has got to go down a step in favour of the
- Hereditary Bearer of the King's Baffy.
- But it was from the priesthood that the real, serious opposition was to
- be expected. And the priests of the sixty-seven gods of Oom were up in
- arms. As the white-bearded High Priest of Hec, who by virtue of his
- office was generally regarded as leader of the guild, remarked in a
- glowing speech at an extraordinary meeting of the Priests' Equity
- Association, he had always set his face against the principle of the
- Closed Shop hitherto, but there were moments when every thinking man
- had to admit that enough was sufficient, and it was his opinion that
- such a moment had now arrived. The cheers which greeted the words
- showed how correctly he had voiced popular sentiment.
- * * * * *
- Of all those who had listened to the High Priest's speech, none had
- listened more intently than the King's half-brother, Ascobaruch. A
- sinister, disappointed man, this Ascobaruch, with mean eyes and a
- crafty smile. All his life he had been consumed with ambition, and
- until now it had looked as though he must go to his grave with this
- ambition unfulfilled. All his life he had wanted to be King of Oom, and
- now he began to see daylight. He was sufficiently versed in Court
- intrigues to be aware that the priests were the party that really
- counted, the source from which all successful revolutions sprang. And
- of all the priests the one that mattered most was the venerable High
- Priest of Hec.
- It was to this prelate, therefore, that Ascobaruch made his way at the
- close of the proceedings. The meeting had dispersed after passing a
- unanimous vote of censure on King Merolchazzar, and the High Priest was
- refreshing himself in the vestry--for the meeting had taken place in
- the Temple of Hec--with a small milk and honey.
- "Some speech!" began Ascobaruch in his unpleasant, crafty way. None
- knew better than he the art of appealing to human vanity.
- The High Priest was plainly gratified.
- "Oh, I don't know," he said, modestly.
- "Yessir!" said Ascobaruch. "Considerable oration! What I can never
- understand is how you think up all these things to say. I couldn't do
- it if you paid me. The other night I had to propose the Visitors at the
- Old Alumni dinner of Oom University, and my mind seemed to go all
- blank. But you just stand up and the words come fluttering out of you
- like bees out of a barn. I simply cannot understand it. The thing gets
- past me."
- "Oh, it's just a knack."
- "A divine gift, I should call it."
- "Perhaps you're right," said the High Priest, finishing his milk and
- honey. He was wondering why he had never realized before what a capital
- fellow Ascobaruch was.
- "Of course," went on Ascobaruch, "you had an excellent subject. I mean
- to say, inspiring and all that. Why, by Hec, even I--though, of course,
- I couldn't have approached your level--even I could have done something
- with a subject like that. I mean, going off and worshipping a new god
- no one has ever heard of. I tell you, my blood fairly boiled. Nobody
- has a greater respect and esteem for Merolchazzar than I have, but I
- mean to say, what! Not right, I mean, going off worshipping gods no one
- has ever heard of! I'm a peaceable man, and I've made it a rule never
- to mix in politics, but if you happened to say to me as we were sitting
- here, just as one reasonable man to another--if you happened to say,
- 'Ascobaruch, I think it's time that definite steps were taken,' I
- should reply frankly, 'My dear old High Priest, I absolutely agree with
- you, and I'm with you all the way.' You might even go so far as to
- suggest that the only way out of the muddle was to assassinate
- Merolchazzar and start with a clean slate."
- The High Priest stroked his beard thoughtfully.
- "I am bound to say I never thought of going quite so far as that."
- "Merely a suggestion, of course," said Ascobaruch. "Take it or leave
- it. I shan't be offended. If you know a superior excavation, go to it.
- But as a sensible man--and I've always maintained that you are the most
- sensible man in the country--you must see that it would be a solution.
- Merolchazzar has been a pretty good king, of course. No one denies
- that. A fair general, no doubt, and a plus-man at lion-hunting. But,
- after all--look at it fairly--is life all battles and lion-hunting?
- Isn't there a deeper side? Wouldn't it be better for the country to
- have some good orthodox fellow who has worshipped Hec all his life, and
- could be relied on to maintain the old beliefs--wouldn't the fact that
- a man like that was on the throne be likely to lead to more general
- prosperity? There are dozens of men of that kind simply waiting to be
- asked. Let us say, purely for purposes of argument, that you approached
- _me_. I should reply, 'Unworthy though I know myself to be of such
- an honour, I can tell you this. If you put me on the throne, you can
- bet your bottom _pazaza_ that there's one thing that won't suffer,
- and that is the worship of Hec!' That's the way I feel about it."
- The High Priest pondered.
- "O thou of unshuffled features but amiable disposition!" he said, "thy
- discourse soundeth good to me. Could it be done?"
- "Could it!" Ascobaruch uttered a hideous laugh. "Could it! Arouse me in
- the night-watches and ask me! Question me on the matter, having stopped
- me for that purpose on the public highway! What I would suggest--I'm
- not dictating, mind you; merely trying to help you out--what I would
- suggest is that you took that long, sharp knife of yours, the one you
- use for the sacrifices, and toddled out to the Linx--you're sure to
- find the King there; and just when he's raising that sacrilegious stick
- of his over his shoulder----"
- "O man of infinite wisdom," cried the High Priest, warmly, "verily hast
- them spoken a fullness of the mouth!"
- "Is it a wager?" said Ascobaruch.
- "It is a wager!" said the High Priest.
- "That's that, then," said Ascobaruch. "Now, I don't want to be mixed up
- in any unpleasantness, so what I think I'll do while what you might
- call the preliminaries are being arranged is to go and take a little
- trip abroad somewhere. The Middle Lakes are pleasant at this time of
- year. When I come back, it's possible that all the formalities will
- have been completed, yes?"
- "Rely on me, by Hec!" said the High Priest grimly, as he fingered his
- weapon.
- * * * * *
- The High Priest was as good as his word. Early on the morrow he made
- his way to the Linx, and found the King holing-out on the second green.
- Merolchazzar was in high good humour.
- "Greetings, O venerable one!" he cried, jovially. "Hadst thou come a
- moment sooner, them wouldst have seen me lay my ball dead--aye, dead as
- mutton, with the sweetest little half-mashie-niblick chip-shot ever
- seen outside the sacred domain of S'nandrew, on whom"--he bared his
- head reverently--"be peace! In one under bogey did I do the hole--yea,
- and that despite the fact that, slicing my drive, I became ensnared in
- yonder undergrowth."
- The High Priest had not the advantage of understanding one word of what
- the King was talking about, but he gathered with satisfaction that
- Merolchazzar was pleased and wholly without suspicion. He clasped an
- unseen hand more firmly about the handle of his knife, and accompanied
- the monarch to the next altar. Merolchazzar stooped, and placed a small
- round white object on a little mound of sand. In spite of his austere
- views, the High Priest, always a keen student of ritual, became
- interested.
- "Why does your Majesty do that?"
- "I tee it up that it may fly the fairer. If I did not, then would it be
- apt to run along the ground like a beetle instead of soaring like a
- bird, and mayhap, for thou seest how rough and tangled is the grass
- before us, I should have to use a niblick for my second."
- The High Priest groped for his meaning.
- "It is a ceremony to propitiate the god and bring good luck?"
- "You might call it that."
- The High Priest shook his head.
- "I may be old-fashioned," he said, "but I should have thought that, to
- propitiate a god, it would have been better to have sacrificed one of
- these _kaddiz_ on his altar."
- "I confess," replied the King, thoughtfully, "that I have often felt
- that it would be a relief to one's feelings to sacrifice one or two
- _kaddiz_, but The Pro for some reason or other has set his face
- against it." He swung at the ball, and sent it forcefully down the
- fairway. "By Abe, the son of Mitchell," he cried, shading his eyes, "a
- bird of a drive! How truly is it written in the book of the prophet
- Vadun, 'The left hand applieth the force, the right doth but guide.
- Grip not, therefore, too closely with the right hand!' Yesterday I was
- pulling all the time."
- The High Priest frowned.
- "It is written in the sacred book of Hec, your Majesty, 'Thou shalt not
- follow after strange gods'."
- "Take thou this stick, O venerable one," said the King, paying no
- attention to the remark, "and have a shot thyself. True, thou art well
- stricken in years, but many a man has so wrought that he was able to
- give his grandchildren a stroke a hole. It is never too late to begin."
- The High Priest shrank back, horrified. The King frowned.
- "It is our Royal wish," he said, coldly.
- The High Priest was forced to comply. Had they been alone, it is
- possible that he might have risked all on one swift stroke with his
- knife, but by this time a group of _kaddiz_ had drifted up, and
- were watching the proceedings with that supercilious detachment so
- characteristic of them. He took the stick and arranged his limbs as the
- King directed.
- "Now," said Merolchazzar, "slow back and keep your e'e on the ba'!"
- * * * * *
- A month later, Ascobaruch returned from his trip. He had received no
- word from the High Priest announcing the success of the revolution, but
- there might be many reasons for that. It was with unruffled contentment
- that he bade his charioteer drive him to the palace. He was glad to get
- back, for after all a holiday is hardly a holiday if you have left your
- business affairs unsettled.
- As he drove, the chariot passed a fair open space, on the outskirts of
- the city. A sudden chill froze the serenity of Ascobaruch's mood. He
- prodded the charioteer sharply in the small of the back.
- "What is that?" he demanded, catching his breath.
- All over the green expanse could be seen men in strange robes, moving
- to and fro in couples and bearing in their hands mystic wands. Some
- searched restlessly in the bushes, others were walking briskly in the
- direction of small red flags. A sickening foreboding of disaster fell
- upon Ascobaruch.
- The charioteer seemed surprised at the question.
- "Yon's the muneecipal linx," he replied.
- "The what?"
- "The muneecipal linx."
- "Tell me, fellow, why do you talk that way?"
- "Whitway?"
- "Why, like that. The way you're talking."
- "Hoots, mon!" said the charioteer. "His Majesty King Merolchazzar--may
- his handicap decrease!--hae passit a law that a' his soobjects shall do
- it. Aiblins, 'tis the language spoken by The Pro, on whom be peace!
- Mphm!"
- Ascobaruch sat back limply, his head swimming. The chariot drove on,
- till now it took the road adjoining the royal Linx. A wall lined a
- portion of this road, and suddenly, from behind this wall, there rent
- the air a great shout of laughter.
- "Pull up!" cried Ascobaruch to the charioteer.
- He had recognized that laugh. It was the laugh of Merolchazzar.
- Ascobaruch crept to the wall and cautiously poked his head over it. The
- sight he saw drove the blood from his face and left him white and
- haggard.
- The King and the Grand Vizier were playing a foursome against the Pro
- and the High Priest of Hec, and the Vizier had just laid the High
- Priest a dead stymie.
- Ascobaruch tottered to the chariot.
- "Take me back," he muttered, pallidly. "I've forgotten something!"
- * * * * *
- And so golf came to Oom, and with it prosperity unequalled in the whole
- history of the land. Everybody was happy. There was no more
- unemployment. Crime ceased. The chronicler repeatedly refers to it in
- his memoirs as the Golden Age. And yet there remained one man on whom
- complete felicity had not descended. It was all right while he was
- actually on the Linx, but there were blank, dreary stretches of the
- night when King Merolchazzar lay sleepless on his couch and mourned
- that he had nobody to love him.
- Of course, his subjects loved him in a way. A new statue had been
- erected in the palace square, showing him in the act of getting out of
- casual water. The minstrels had composed a whole cycle of up-to-date
- songs, commemorating his prowess with the mashie. His handicap was down
- to twelve. But these things are not all. A golfer needs a loving wife,
- to whom he can describe the day's play through the long evenings. And
- this was just where Merolchazzar's life was empty. No word had come
- from the Princess of the Outer Isles, and, as he refused to be put off
- with just-as-good substitutes, he remained a lonely man.
- But one morning, in the early hours of a summer day, as he lay sleeping
- after a disturbed night, Merolchazzar was awakened by the eager hand of
- the Lord High Chamberlain, shaking his shoulder.
- "Now what?" said the King.
- "Hoots, your Majesty! Glorious news! The Princess of the Outer Isles
- waits without--I mean wi'oot!"
- The King sprang from his couch.
- "A messenger from the Princess at last!"
- "Nay, sire, the Princess herself--that is to say," said the Lord
- Chamberlain, who was an old man and had found it hard to accustom
- himself to the new tongue at his age, "her ain sel'! And believe me, or
- rather, mind ah'm telling ye," went on the honest man, joyfully, for he
- had been deeply exercised by his monarch's troubles, "her Highness is
- the easiest thing to look at these eyes hae ever seen. And you can say
- I said it!"
- "She is beautiful?"
- "Your majesty, she is, in the best and deepest sense of the word, a
- pippin!"
- King Merolchazzar was groping wildly for his robes.
- "Tell her to wait!" he cried. "Go and amuse her. Ask her riddles! Tell
- her anecdotes! Don't let her go. Say I'll be down in a moment. Where in
- the name of Zoroaster is our imperial mesh-knit underwear?"
- * * * * *
- A fair and pleasing sight was the Princess of the Outer Isles as she
- stood on the terrace in the clear sunshine of the summer morning,
- looking over the King's gardens. With her delicate little nose she
- sniffed the fragrance of the flowers. Her blue eyes roamed over the
- rose bushes, and the breeze ruffled the golden curls about her temples.
- Presently a sound behind her caused her to turn, and she perceived a
- godlike man hurrying across the terrace pulling up a sock. And at the
- sight of him the Princess's heart sang within her like the birds down
- in the garden.
- "Hope I haven't kept you waiting," said Merolchazzar, apologetically.
- He, too, was conscious of a strange, wild exhilaration. Truly was this
- maiden, as his Chamberlain had said, noticeably easy on the eyes. Her
- beauty was as water in the desert, as fire on a frosty night, as
- diamonds, rubies, pearls, sapphires, and amethysts.
- "Oh, no!" said the princess, "I've been enjoying myself. How passing
- beautiful are thy gardens, O King!"
- "My gardens may be passing beautiful," said Merolchazzar, earnestly,
- "but they aren't half so passing beautiful as thy eyes. I have dreamed
- of thee by night and by day, and I will tell the world I was nowhere
- near it! My sluggish fancy came not within a hundred and fifty-seven
- miles of the reality. Now let the sun dim his face and the moon hide
- herself abashed. Now let the flowers bend their heads and the gazelle
- of the mountains confess itself a cripple. Princess, your slave!"
- And King Merolchazzar, with that easy grace so characteristic of
- Royalty, took her hand in his and kissed it.
- As he did so, he gave a start of surprise.
- "By Hec!" he exclaimed. "What hast thou been doing to thyself? Thy hand
- is all over little rough places inside. Has some malignant wizard laid
- a spell upon thee, or what is it?"
- The Princess blushed.
- "If I make that clear to thee," she said, "I shall also make clear why
- it was that I sent thee no message all this long while. My time was so
- occupied, verily I did not seem to have a moment. The fact is, these
- sorenesses are due to a strange, new religion to which I and my
- subjects have but recently become converted. And O that I might make
- thee also of the true faith! 'Tis a wondrous tale, my lord. Some two
- moons back there was brought to my Court by wandering pirates a captive
- of an uncouth race who dwell in the north. And this man has taught
- us----"
- King Merolchazzar uttered a loud cry.
- "By Tom, the son of Morris! Can this truly be so? What is thy
- handicap?"
- The Princess stared at him, wide-eyed.
- "Truly this is a miracle! Art thou also a worshipper of the great
- Gowf?"
- "Am I!" cried the King. "Am I!" He broke off. "Listen!"
- From the minstrels' room high up in the palace there came the sound of
- singing. The minstrels were practising a new paean of praise--words by
- the Grand Vizier, music by the High Priest of Hec--which they were to
- render at the next full moon at the banquet of the worshippers of Gowf.
- The words came clear and distinct through the still air:
- _"Oh, praises let us utter
- To our most glorious King!
- It fairly makes you stutter
- To see him start his swing!
- Success attend his putter!
- And luck be with his drive!
- And may he do each hole in two,
- Although the bogey's five!"_
- The voices died away. There was a silence.
- "If I hadn't missed a two-foot putt, I'd have done the long fifteenth
- in four yesterday," said the King.
- "I won the Ladies' Open Championship of the Outer Isles last week,"
- said the Princess.
- They looked into each other's eyes for a long moment. And then, hand in
- hand, they walked slowly into the palace.
- EPILOGUE
- "Well?" we said, anxiously.
- "I like it," said the editor.
- "Good egg!" we murmured.
- The editor pressed a bell, a single ruby set in a fold of the tapestry
- upon the wall. The major-domo appeared.
- "Give this man a purse of gold," said the editor, "and throw him out."
- THE END
- End of Project Gutenberg's The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P. G. Wodehouse
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