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