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.