1 files changed, 8227 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/click10.txt b/old/click10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..979d6e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/click10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8227 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P. G. Wodehouse
+#21 in our series by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Clicking of Cuthbert
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7028]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 24, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT ***
+
+
+This eBooks was 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 pretty 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, but 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 if.
+
+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 falls 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 a long 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
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLICKING OF CUTHBERT ***
+
+This file should be named click10.txt or click10.zip
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, click11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, click10a.txt
+
+This eBooks was produced by Suzanne L. Shell,
+Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+